Chapter 23
Sir John was as good as his word. The Scottish prisoners were strung out in companies along the Tower ledges, and kept there day after day, till the Scottish Army had retreated, baffled for that time, and St. Nicholas was saved. Therefore, thanks to Sir John Marley and his nimble wit, the pinnacled Crown still soars up aloft into the sky, keeping guard over the city of Newcastle to-day, as it hath done throughout the centuries.
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Little did the Friends, who came to Newcastle a few years after the Scotsmen had departed, regard the beauty of St. Nicholas or its Tower. They came also desiring to besiege the town, though with only spiritual weapons. The Church to them was but a 'steeple-house,' and the Tower akin to an idol. Thus slowly do men learn that 'the ways unto God are as the number of the souls of the children of men,' and that wherever a man truly seeketh God in whatsoever fashion, so he do but seek honestly and with his whole heart, God will consent to be found of him.
Yet though the Friends who came to Newcastle came truly to besiege the town for love's sake, not with love did the town receive them. 'Ruddy-faced John Audland' was the first to come, he who had been one of the preachers that memorable Sunday at Firbank Chapel, and who, having yielded place to George Fox, had been in his turn mightily convinced of Truth. 'A man beloved of God, and of all good men,' was John Audland, 'of an exceedingly sweet disposition, unspeakably loving and tenderly affectionate, always ready to lend a helping hand to the weak and needy, open-hearted, free and near to his friends, deep in the understanding of the heavenly mysteries.' Yet little all this availed him. In Newcastle as elsewhere he preached the Truth, 'full of dread and shining brightness on his countenance.' Certain of the townsfolk gathered themselves unto him and became Friends, but the authorities would have none of the new doctrine, and straightway clapped him into gaol. There he lay for a time, till at last he was set free and went his way.
After him came George Fox, when some thirteen years had gone by since Sir John Marley saved the Tower, and General Leslie had returned discomfited to Edinburgh. From Edinburgh, too, George Fox had come on his homeward way after that eventful journey to the Northern Kingdom, when 'the infinite sparks of life sparkled about him as soon as his horse set foot across the Border.' Weary he was of riding when he reached the gates of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Yet 'gladded' in his heart was he, for as he had passed by Berwick-upon-Tweed, the Governor there had 'shewn himself loving towards Friends,' and, though only a little Meeting had been gathered, 'the Lord's power had been over all.' As Fox and his companion rode through the woods and beside the yellow brown streams and over the heathery moors of Northumberland, they found and visited many scattered Friends whose welcome had made George Fox's heart rejoice. But no sooner had he entered the town than all his gladness left him, at the grievous tale the faithful Friends of Newcastle had to tell. Ever since John Audland's preaching had stirred the souls of the townsfolk, the priests and professors had done their best to prevent 'this pernicious poison from spreading.' Five Newcastle priests had written a book, entitled 'the Perfect Pharisee under Monkish Holiness,' in which they blamed Friends for many things, but above all for their custom of preaching in the streets and open places. 'It is a pestilent heresy at best,' they said (though they used not these very words), 'yet did they keep it to themselves 'twere no great harm, but we find no place hears so much of Friends' religion as streets and market-places.'
Yet even so their witness agreed not together. For while the priests accused Friends of too much preaching in public, a certain Alderman of the city, Thomas Ledger by name, put forth three other books against them. And his main charge was this--'THAT THE QUAKERS WOULD NOT COME INTO ANY GREAT TOWNS, BUT LIVED IN THE FELLS LIKE BUTTERFLIES.'
George Fox, hearing these things from the Friends assembled to greet him at the entrance to the town, was tried in his spirit, and determined that the matter should be dealt with, without more ado. The Journal saith: 'The Newcastle priests wrote many books against us, and one Ledger, an Alderman of the town, was very envious of truth and friends. He and the priests had said, "the Quakers would not come into great towns, but lived in the fells like butterflies." I took Anthony Pearson with me and went to this Ledger, and several others of the Aldermen, desiring to have a meeting among them, seeing they had written so many things against us: for we were now come, I told them, into their great town. But they would not yield we should have a meeting, neither would they be spoke with, save only this Ledger and one other. I queried: "Had they not called Friends Butterflies, and said we would not come into any great towns? And now they would not come at us, though they had printed books against us; WHO ARE THE BUTTERFLIES NOW?"
'As we could not have a public meeting amongst them we got a little meeting amongst friends and friendly people at the Gate-side. As I was passing by the market-side, the power of the Lord rose in me, to warn them of the day of the Lord that was coming upon them. And not long after all the priests were turned out of their profession, when the King came in.'
Thus did those same envious priests, who had accused Friends of living like butterflies in the fells, become themselves as butterflies, being chased out of the great town, and forced to flit to and fro in the open country. The Friends, meanwhile, increased on both sides of the river Tyne. In 1657 George Whitehead visited Newcastle, and was kindly received in the house of one John Dove, who had been a Lieutenant in the army before he became a Friend.
Whitehead, himself one of the 'Valiant Sixty,' writes:--'The Mayor of the town (influenced by the priests), would not suffer us to keep any meeting within the Liberty of the Town, though in Gate-side (being out of the Mayor's Liberty), our Friends had settled a meeting at our beloved Friend Richard Ubank's house.... The first meeting we then endeavoured to have within the town of Newcastle was in a large room taken on purpose by some Friends.... The meeting was not fully gathered when the Mayor of the Town and his Officers came, and by force turned us out of the meeting; and not only so, but out of the Town also; for the Mayor and his Company commanded us and went along with us as far as the Bridge over the river Tine that parts Newcastle and Gates-head, upon which Bridge there is a Blew Stone to which the Mayor's Liberty extends; when we came to the stone, the Mayor gave his charge to each of us in these words: "I charge and command you in the name of His Highness the Lord Protector. That you come no more into Newcastle to have any more meetings there at your peril.'"
The Friends, therefore, continued to meet at the place that is called Gateside (though some say that Goat's head was the name of it at first), and there they remained till, after divers persecutions, they were at length suffered to assemble within the walls of Newcastle itself, upon the north side of the 'Blew Stone' above the River Tyne. Here, in 1698, they bought a plot of ground, within a stone's-throw of St. Nicholas, facing towards the street that the townsmen call Pilgrim Street, since thither in olden days did many weary pilgrims wend their way, seeking to come unto the Mound of Jesu on the outskirts of the town. And that same Mound of Jesu is now called by men, Jesu Mond, or shorter, Jesmond, and no longer is it the resort of pilgrims, but rather of merchants and pleasure seekers. Yet still beside the Pilgrim Street stands the Meeting-House built by those other pilgrim souls, those Quakers, whom the men of the town in scorn called 'butterflies.' And there, so far from flitting over the fells, they have continued to hold their Meetings and worship God after their own fashion within those walls for more than two hundred years.
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Before ever this had come to pass, and while the Quakers of Newcastle were still without an assembling place on their own side of the river, it happened that a certain man among them, named Robert Jeckel, being nigh unto death (though as yet he knew it not), was seized with a vehement desire to behold George Fox yet once more in the flesh, since full sixteen years had gone by since his visit to the town.
Wherefore this same Robert Jeckel, hearing that his beloved friend was now again to be found at Swarthmoor, dwelling there in much seclusion, seeking to regain the strength that had been sorely wasted in long and terrible imprisonments,--this man, Robert Jeckel, would no longer be persuaded or gainsaid, but set out at once with several others, who were like-minded and desirous to come as speedily as might be to Swarthmoor.
In good heart they set forth, but that same day, and before they had come even as far as unto Hexham, Robert Jeckel was seized with a sore sickness, whereat his friends entreated him to return the way he came to his own home and tender wife. But he refused to be dissuaded and would still press forward. At many other places by the way he was ill and suffering, yet he would not be satisfied to turn back or to stop until he should arrive at Swarthmoor. And thither after many days of sore travel he came.
The Mistress of Swarthmoor was now no longer Margaret Fell but Margaret Fox. Eight full years after the death of her honoured husband, Judge Fell, and after long waiting to be sure that the thing was from the Lord, she had been united in marriage with her beloved friend, George Fox, unto whom she was ever a most loving and dutiful wife. Therefore, when Robert Jeckel arrived with his friends before the high arched stone gateway that led into the avenue that approacheth Swarthmoor Hall, it was Mistress Fox, who, with her husband, came to meet their guests. Close behind followed her youngest daughter, Rachel Fell, the Seventh Sister of Swarthmoor Hall. She, the Judge's pet and plaything in her childhood, was now a woman grown. Seeing by Robert Jeckel's countenance that he was sorely stricken, Mistress Fox led him straight to the fair guest chamber of Swarthmoor, where she and her daughter nursed him with their wonted tenderness and skill, hoping thus, if it might be, to restore him to his home in peace. But it had been otherwise ordained, for Robert Jeckel, arriving at Swarthmoor on the second day of the fifth month that men call July, lay sick there but for nine days and then he died.
During his illness many and good words did he say, among others these: 'Though I was persuaded to stay by the way (being indisposed), before I came to this place, yet this was the place where I would have been, and the place where I should be, whether I live or die.'
George Fox, being himself, as I say, weakened by his long suffering in Worcester Gaol, was yet able to visit Robert Jeckel as he lay a-dying, and exhorted him to offer up his soul and spirit to the Lord, who gives life and breath to all and takes it again. Whereupon Robert Jeckel lifted up his hands and said, 'The Lord is worthy of it, and I have done it.' George Fox then asked him if he could say, 'Thy will, oh God, be done on earth as it is in heaven,' and he, lifting up his hands again, and looking upwards with his eyes, answered cheerfully, 'he did it.'
Then, he in his turn, exhorting those about him, said: 'Dear Friends, dwell in love and unity together, and keep out of jars, strife, and contentions, and be sure to continue faithful to the end.' And speaking of his wife, he said, 'As to my wife, I give her up freely to the Lord; for she loveth the Lord and He will love her. I have often told my dear wife, as to what we have of outward things, it was the Lord's first before it was ours; and in that I desire she may serve the truth to the end of her days.'
'In much patience the Lord did keep him, and he was in perfect sense and memory all the time of his weakness, often saying, "Dear Friends, give me up and weep not for me, for I am content with the Lord's doings." And often said that he had no pain, but gradually declined, often lifting up his hands while he had strength, praising the Lord, and made a comfortable end on the 11th day of the fifth month, 1676.'
Thus did the joyful spirit of this dear friend at last take flight for the Heavenly Country, when, as he said himself in his sickness, 'Soul separated from body, the Spirit returning to God that gave it, and the body to the earth from whence it came.'
Yea, verily; his soul took flight for the Heavenly Country, happier in its escape from the worn chrysalis of his weak and weary body than any glad-winged butterfly that flitteth over the fells of his own beloved Northumberland.
XXIV. THE VICTORY OF AMOR STODDART
_'From the heart of the Puritan sects sprang the religion of the Quakers, in which many a war-worn soldier of the Commonwealth closed his visionary eyes.'--G.M. TREVELYAN._
_'To be a man of war means to live no longer than the life of the world, which is perishing; but to be a man of the Holy Spirit, a man born of God, a man that wars not after the flesh, a man of the Kingdom of God, as well as of England--that means to live beyond time and age and men and the world, to be gathered into that life which is Eternal.'--JOHN SALTMARSH, 1647._
_'Keep out of all jangling, for all that are in the transgression are out from the law of love; but all that are in the law of love come to the Lamb's power.'--G. FOX._
_'He changed his weapons, warfare, and Captain ... when he 'listed himself under the banner of Christ.'--W. PENN, about J. Whitehead._
_A prayer for the soldier spirit. 'Teach us, good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest: to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labour and not to ask for any reward, save that of knowing that we do Thy will: through Jesus Christ our Lord.'--IGNATIUS LOYOLA._
XXIV. THE VICTORY OF AMOR STODDART
'Christ disarmed Peter, and in so doing He unbuckled the sword of every soldier.' TERTULLIAN.
A dauntless fighter in his day was Captain Amor Stoddart, seeing he had served in the Parliamentary Army throughout the Civil Wars. In truth, it was no child's play to command a body of men as tough as Oliver's famous Ironsides. Therefore Captain Stoddart had doubtless come through many a bloody struggle, and fought in many a hardly fought contest during those long wars, before the final victory was won.
But now, not a single memory remains of his small individual share in those
'Old unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago.'
His story has come down to us as a staunch comrade and a valiant fighter, in a different kind of warfare. His victory was won in a struggle in which all the visible weapons were on the other side; when, through long years, he had only the armour of meekness and of love wherewith to oppose hardship and violence and wrong.
Wherefore, of this fight and of this victory, his own name remains as a symbol and a sign. Not in vain was he called at his birth 'Amor,' which, in the Latin tongue signifies 'Love,' as all men know.
The first meeting between Captain Amor Stoddart and him who was to be thereafter his spirit's earthly captain in the new strange warfare that lay before him, happened on this wise.
In the year 1648, when the long Civil Wars were at last nearing their close, George Fox visited Mansfield in Nottinghamshire and held a meeting with the professors (that is to say the Puritans) there. It was in that same year of 1648, when every day the shadow was drawing nearer of the fatal scaffold that should be erected within the Palace at Whitehall the following January. But although that shadow crept daily nearer, men, for the most part, as yet perceived it not. Fox himself was at this time still young, as years are counted, being only twenty-four years of age. Four other summers were yet to pass before that memorable day when he should climb to the summit of old Pendle Hill, and, after seeing there the vision of a 'great people to be gathered,' should begin himself to gather them at Firbank and Swarthmoor and many another place.
George, though still young in years, was already possessed not only of a strange and wonderful presence, but also of a gift to perceive and to draw the souls of other men, and to knit them to his own.
'I went again to Mansfield,' he says in his Journal, 'where was a Great Meeting of professors and people, where I was moved to pray; and the Lord's power was so great that the house seemed to be shaken. When I had done, one of the professors said, "It was now as in the days of the Apostles, when the house was shaken where they were."'
After Fox had finished praying, with this vehemence that seemed to shake the house, one of the professors began to pray in his turn, but in such a dead and formal way that even the other professors were grieved thereat and rebuked him. Whereupon this praying professor came in all humility to Fox, beseeching him that he would pray again. 'But,' says Fox, 'I could not pray in any man's will.' Still, though he could not make a prayer to order, he agreed to meet with these same professors another day.
This second meeting was another 'Great Meeting.' From far and wide the professors and people gathered to see the man who had learnt to pray. But the professors did not truly seem to care to learn the secret. They went on talking and arguing together. They were 'jangling,' as Fox calls it (that is to say, using endless strings of words to talk about sacred things, without really feeling the truth of them in their hearts), jangling all together, when suddenly the door opened and a grave young officer walked in. ''Tis Captain Amor Stoddart, of Noll's Army,' the professors said one to another, as, hardly stopping for a moment at the stranger's entrance, they continued to 'jangle' among themselves. They went on, speaking of the most holy things, talking even about the blood of Christ, without any feeling of solemnity, till Fox could bear it no longer.
'As they were discoursing of it,' he says, 'I saw through the immediate opening of the invisible Spirit, the blood of Christ; and cried out among them saying, "Do you not see the blood of Christ? See it in your hearts, to sprinkle your hearts and consciences from dead works to serve the living God?" For I saw the blood of the New Covenant how it came into the heart. This startled the professors who would have the blood only without them, and not in them. But Captain Stoddart was reached, and said, "Let the youth speak, hear the youth speak," when he saw that they endeavoured to bear me down with many words.'
'Captain Stoddart was reached.' He, the soldier, accustomed to the terrible realities of a battlefield, knew the sight of blood for himself only too well. George Fox's words may seem perhaps mysterious to us now, but they came home to Amor and made him able to see something of the same vision that Fox saw. We may not be able to see that vision ourselves, but at least we can feel the difference between having the Blood of Christ, that is the Life of Christ, within our hearts, and only talking and 'jangling' about it, as the professors were doing. 'Captain Stoddart was reached.' Having been 'reached,' having seen, if only for one moment, something of what the Cross had meant to Christ, and having felt His Life within, Amor became a different man. To take the lives of his fellowmen, to shed their blood for whom that Blood had been shed, was henceforth for him impossible. He unbuckled his sword, and resigning his captaincy in Oliver's conquering army, just when victory was at hand after the stern struggle, he followed his despised Quaker teacher into obscurity.
For seven long years we hear nothing more of him. Then he appears again at George Fox's side, no longer Captain Stoddart the Officer, but plain Amor Stoddart, a comrade and helper of the first Publishers of Truth.
In the year 1655, Fox's Journal records: 'On the sixth day I had a large meeting near Colchester[33] to which many professors and the Independent teachers came. After I had done speaking and was stepped down from the place on which I stood, one of the Independent teachers began to make a "jangling" [it seems they still went on jangling, even after seven long years!], which Amor Stoddart perceiving said, "Stand up again, George!" for I was going away and did not at the first hear them.'
If Amor Stoddart had unbuckled his sword, evidently he had not lost the power of grappling with difficulties, of swiftly seeing the right thing to do, and of giving his orders with soldier-like precision.
'Stand up again, George!'--a quick, military command, in the fewest possible words. George Fox was more in the habit of commanding other people than of being commanded himself; but he knew his comrade and obeyed without a word.
'I stood up again,' he says, 'when I heard the Independent [the man who had been jangling], and after a while the Lord's power came over him and all his company, who were confounded, and the Lord's truth was over all. A great flock of sheep hath the Lord in that country that feed in His pastures of life.'
Nevertheless, without Amor Stoddart the sheep would have gone away hungry, and would not have been fed at that meeting.
Again we hear of Amor a little later in the same year, still at George Fox's side, but this time not as a passive spectator, nor even merely as a resourceful comrade. He was now himself to be a sufferer for the Truth. He still lives for us through his share in a strange but wonderful scene of George Fox's life. A few months after the meeting at Colchester, the two friends visited Cambridge, and 'there,' says Fox in his Journal, 'the scholars, hearing of me, were up and were exceeding rude. I kept on my horse's back and rode through them in the Lord's power. "Oh," said they, "HE SHINES, HE GLISTERS," but they unhorsed Amor Stoddart before we could get to the inn. When we were in the inn they were so rude in the courts and the streets, so that the miners, colliers, and carters could never be ruder. And the people of the inn asked us 'what we would have for supper' as is the way of inns. "Supper," said I, "were it not that the Lord's power is over them, these rude scholars look as if they would pluck us in pieces and make a supper of us!"'
After this treatment, the two friends might have been expected to keep away from Cambridge in the future; but that was not their way. Where the fight was hottest, there these two faithful soldiers of the Cross were sure to be found. The very next year saw Fox back in Cambridgeshire once more; and again Amor Stoddart was with him, standing by his side and sharing all dangers like a valiant and faithful friend.