Chapter 7

As time went on, many dismal people (looking on the gloomy side of things, as dismal people always do) began to shake their heads and say, 'Poor young man, he will spend all his life in gaol. You will see he will never be set free or get his liberty again.' But Fox refused to be cast down. Narrow though his prison was, Hope shared it with him. 'I had faith in God,' his Journal says, 'that I should be delivered from that place in the Lord's time, but not yet, being set there for a work He had for me to do!' Work there was for him in prison truly. A young woman prisoner who had robbed her master was sentenced to be hanged, according to the barbarous law then in force. This shocked Fox so much that he wrote letters to her judges and to the men who were to have been her executioners, expressing his horror at what was going to happen in such strong language that he actually softened their hearts. Although the girl had actually reached the foot of the gallows, and her grave had already been dug, she was reprieved. Then, when she was brought back into prison again after this wonderful escape Fox was able to pour light and life into her soul, which was an even greater thing than saving her body from death. Many other prisoners did Fox help and comfort in Derby Gaol;[2] but though he could soften the sufferings of others he could not shorten his own. Once again Justice Bennett sent his men to the prison, this time with orders to take the Quaker by force and compel him to join the army, since he would not fight of his own free will.

'But I told him,' said Fox, '"that I was brought off from outward wars." They came again to give me press money, but I would take none. Afterwards the Constables brought me a second time before the Commissioners, who said I should go for a soldier, but I said I was dead to it. They said I was alive. I told them where envy and hatred is, there is confusion. They offered me money twice, but I refused it. Being disappointed, they were angry, and committed me a close prisoner, till at length they were made to turn me out of Gaol about the beginning of winter 1651, after I had been a prisoner in Derby almost a year; six months in the House of Correction, and six months in the common gaol.'

Thus at length Derby prison was left behind; but the seeds that the prisoner had planted in that dark place sprang up and flourished and bore fruit long after he had left.

Eleven years later, the very same Gaoler, who had been cruel to Fox at the first, and had then had the vision and repented, wrote this letter to his former prisoner. It is a real Gaoler's love-letter, and quite fresh to-day, though it was written nearly 300 years ago.

'DEAR FRIEND,' the letter begins,

'Having such a convenient messenger I could do no less than give thee an account of my present condition; remembering that to the first awakening of me to a sense of life, God was pleased to make use of thee as an instrument. So that sometimes I am taken with admiration that it should come by such means as it did; that is to say that Providence should order thee to be my prisoner to give me my first sight of the truth. It makes me think of the gaoler's conversion by the apostles. Oh! happy George Fox! that first breathed the breath of life within the walls of my habitation! Notwithstanding that my outward losses are since that time such that I am become nothing in the world, yet I hope I shall find that these light afflictions, which are but for a moment, will work for me a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. They have taken all from me; and now instead of keeping a prison, I am waiting rather when I shall become a prisoner myself. Pray for me that my faith fail not, and that I may hold out to the death, that I may receive a crown of life. I earnestly desire to hear from thee and of thy condition, which would very much rejoice me. Not having else at present, but my kind love to thee and all friends, in haste, I rest thine in Christ Jesus.

'THOMAS SHARMAN.

'Derby, the 22nd of the fourth month, 1662.'

This Gaoler was one of the first people whose Tiger spirits were tamed by George Fox. But he certainly was not the last. Fox himself had told the soldiers in Derby market-place that he could not fight, because he 'lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars.' As a friend of his wrote, after his death many years later: 'George Fox was a discerner of other men's spirits, AND VERY MUCH A MASTER OF HIS OWN.'

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Two men who were executed for small offences he could not save, but 'a little time after they had suffered their spirits appeared to me as I was walking, and I saw the men was well.'

V. 'THE MAN IN LEATHER BREECHES'

_'As I was walking I heard old people and work people to say: "he is such a man as never was, he knows people's thoughts" for I turned them to the divine light of Christ and His spirit let them see ... that there was the first step to peace to stand still in the light that showed them their sin and transgression.'--G. FOX._

_'Do not look at but keep over all unnaturalness, if any such thing should appear, but keep in that which was and is and will be.'--G. FOX._

_'Wait patiently upon the Lord; let every man that loves God, endeavour by the spirit of wisdom, meekness, and love to dry up Euphrates, even this spirit of bitterness that like a great river hath overflowed the earth of mankind.'--GERRARD WINSTANLEY. 1648._

_'Blessed is he who loves Thee, and his friend in Thee, and his enemy for Thy sake.'--AUGUSTINE._

_'Eternity is just the real world for which we were made, and which we enter through the door of love.'--RUFUS M. JONES._

V. 'THE MAN IN LEATHER BREECHES'

22nd Dec. 1651.

'Rough Moll, the worst-tempered woman in all Yorkshire.' It was thus her neighbours were wont to speak behind her back of Mistress Moll, the keeper of the 'George and Dragon' Inn at Hutton Cranswick near Driffield in the East Riding. Never a good word or a kind deed had she for anyone, since her husband had been called away to serve in King Charles's army. In former days, when mine host was at home, the neighbours had been encouraged to come early and stay late at night gossipping over the home-brewed ale he fetched for them so cheerily; for Moll's husband was an open-hearted, pleasant-mannered man, the very opposite of his shrewish wife. But now, since his departure for the wars, the neighbours got to the bottom of their mugs with as little delay as possible, vowing to themselves in whispers that they would seek refuge elsewhere another night, since Moll's sour looks went near to give a flavour of vinegar even to the ale she brewed. Thus, as speedily as might be, they escaped from the reach of their hostess's sharp tongue.

But the lasses of the inn, who were kept to do the rough work of the house, found it harder to escape from the harsh rule of their mistress. And for little Jan, Moll's four-year-old son, there was still less possibility of escape from the tyrant whom he called by the name of Mother.

Nothing of true mother-love had ever yet been kindled in Rough Moll's heart. From the very beginning she had fiercely resented being burdened with what she called 'the plague of a brat.' Still, so long as his father remained at home, the child's life had not been an unhappy one. As soon as ever he could stand alone he drew himself up by his father's trousers, with an outstretched hand to be grasped in the big fist. As soon as he could toddle, he spent his days wandering round the Inn after his daddy, knowing that directly he grew tired daddy would be ready to stop whatever he might be doing, in order to lift the small boy up in his arms or to give him a ride on his knee.

'Wasting your time over the brat and leaving the Tavern to go to rack and ruin'--Moll would say, with a sneer, as she passed them. But she never interfered; for the husband who had courted her when she was a young girl was the only person for whom she still kept a soft spot in the heart that of late years seemed to have grown so hard.

Truth to tell, tavern-keeping was no easy business in those unsettled times, and Moll had ever been a famous body for worrying over trifles.

'"The worry cow Would have lived till now, If she had not lost her breath, But she thought her hay Would not last the day, So she mooed herself to death."

'And all the time she had three sacks full! Remember that, Moll, my lass!' Jan's father would say to his wife, when she began to pour out to him her dismal forebodings about the future.

But since this easy-going, jolly daddy had left the Inn and had gone away with the other men and lads of the village to fight with My Lord for the King, little Jan's lot was a hard one, and seemed likely to grow harder day by day.

Rough Moll's own life was not too easy either, at this time, though few folks troubled themselves to speculate upon the reason for her added gruffness. So she concealed her anxieties under an extra harshness of tongue and did her best to make life a burden to everyone she came across. For, naturally, now that the Inn was no longer a pleasant place in mine host's absence, it was no longer a profitable place either. Custom was falling off and quarter day was fast approaching. Moll was at her wits' end to know where she should find money to pay her rent, when, one day, to her unspeakable relief, My Lady in her coach stopped at the door of the Inn. Now Moll had been dairymaid up at the Hall years ago, before her marriage, and My Lady knew of old that Moll's butter was as sweet as her looks were sour. Perhaps she guessed, also, at some of the other woman's anxieties; for was not her own husband, My Lord, away at the wars too? Anyway, when the fine yellow coach stopped at the door of the Inn, it was My Lady's own head with the golden ringlets that leaned out of the window, and My Lady's own soft voice that asked if her old dairymaid could possibly oblige her with no less than thirty pounds of butter for her Yuletide feast to the villagers the following week.

The Moll who came out, smiling and flattered, to the Inn door and stood there curtseying very low to her Ladyship, was a different being from the Rough Moll of every day. She promised, with her very smoothest tongue, she would not fail. She knew where to get the milk, and her Ladyship should have the butter, full weight and the very best, by the following evening, which would leave two full days before Christmas.

'That is settled then, for I have never known you to fail me,' said My Lady, as the coach drove away, leaving Moll curtseying behind her, and vowing again that 'let come what would come,' she would not fail.

It was small wonder, therefore, after this unaccustomed graciousness, that she was shorter-tempered than ever with her unfortunate guests that evening. Was not their presence hindering her from getting on with her task? At length she left the lasses to serve the ale, which, truth to tell, they were nothing loath to do, while Moll herself, in her wooden shoes and with her skirts tucked up all round her, clattered in and out of the dairy where already a goodly row of large basins stood full to the brim with rich yellow milk on which, even now, the cream was fast rising.

Thirty pounds of butter could never all be made in one day; she must begin her task overnight. True, little Jan was whining to go to bed as he tried vainly to keep awake on his small hard stool by the fire. The brat must wait; she could not attend to him now. He could sleep well enough leaning against the bricks of the chimney-corner. Or, no! the butter-making would take a long time, and Moll was never a methodical woman. Jan should lie down, just as he was, and have a nap in the kitchen until she was ready to attend to him. Roughly, but not unkindly, she pulled him off the stool and laid him down on a rug in a dark corner of the kitchen and told him to be off to sleep as fast as he could, stooping to cover him with an old coat of her husband's that was hanging on the door, as she spoke. Nothing loath, Jan shut his sleepy eyes, and, burying his little nose in the folds of the old coat, he went happily off into dreamland, soothed by the well-remembered out-door smell that always clung around his father's belongings.

It did not take Moll long to fill the churn and to set it in its place. Just as she was busy shutting down the lid, there came a knock at the door. 'Plague take you, Stranger,' she grumbled, as she opened it, and a gust of snow and wind blew in upon her and the assembled guests in the tavern kitchen. 'You bring in more of the storm than you are likely to pay for your ale.'

'My desire is not for ale,' said the Stranger, speaking slowly, and looking at the woman keenly from underneath his shaggy eyebrows. 'I came but to ask thee for shelter from the storm; and for a little meat, if thou hast any to set before me.'

'To ask _thee_ for shelter.' 'If _thou_ hast any meat.' The unusual form of address caught Moll's ear. She looked more closely at her visitor. Yes, his lower limbs were not covered with homely Yorkshire frieze; they were encased in odd garments that must surely be made of leather, since the snowflakes lay upon them in crisp wreaths and wrinkles before they melted. She had heard of the strange being who was visiting those parts and she had no desire to make his acquaintance. 'Hey, lasses!' she called to her maids at the far end of the tavern parlour, 'here is the man in leather breeches himself, come to pay us a visit this wild night!'

A shout of laughter went up from the men at their tankards. 'The man in leather breeches!' 'Send him out again into the storm! We'll have none of his company here, the spoil sport!'

Moll nodded assent, and returning to her unwelcome guest, said shortly, 'Meat there is none for you here,' and moved towards the door, where the Stranger still stood, as if to close it upon him.

But the man was not to be so easily dismissed.

'Hast thou then milk?' he asked.

Moll laughed aloud. A man who did not want ale should not have milk; no money to be made out of that; especially this night of all nights, when every drop would be wanted for her Ladyship's butter.

Lies were part of Moll's regular stock-in-trade. She lied now, with the ease of long habit.

'You will get no shelter here,' she said roughly, 'and as for milk, there is not a drop in the house.'

The Stranger looked at her. He spoke no words for a full minute, but as his eyes pierced her through and through, she knew that he knew that she had lied. The knowledge made her angry. She repeated her words with an oath. The Stranger made as if to turn away; then, almost reluctantly but very tenderly, as if he were being drawn back in spite of himself: 'Hast thou then cream?' he asked. Yet, though his tone was persuasive, his brows were knitted as he stood looking down upon the angry woman.

'Not as if he cared about the cream, but as if he cared about me,' Moll said herself, long after. But at the time: 'No, nor cream either. On my soul, there is not a drop in the house,' she repeated, more fiercely than before.

But, even as she spoke, she saw that the Stranger's eyes were fastened on the churn that stood behind her, the churn evidently full and drawn out for use, with drops of rich yellow cream still standing upon the lid and trickling down the sides.

Moll turned her square shoulders upon the churn as if to shut out its witness to her falsehood. Her lies came thick and fast; 'I tell you there is not a single drop of cream in the house.'

The next moment, a loud crash made her look round. She had forgotten Jan! The loud angry voice and the cold blast from the open door had awakened him before he had had time to get sound asleep. Hearing his mother vow that she had not a drop of cream in the house, he left his rug and began playing about again. Then, being ever a restless little mortal, he had crept round to the churn to see if it had really become empty in such a short time. He had tried to pull himself up by one of the legs in order to stand on the rim and see if there was really no cream inside; and in attempting this feat, naturally, he had pulled the whole churn over upon him. And not only the churn,--its contents too! Eighteen quarts of Moll's richest yellow cream were streaming all over the kitchen floor. Pools, lakes, rivers, seas of cream were running over the flagstones and dripping through the crevices into the ground.

With a cry of rage Moll turned, and, seeing the damage, she sprang upon little Jan and beat him soundly; and a beating from Moll's heavy hand was no small matter: then with a curse she flung the child away from her towards the hearth.

'Woman!' The Stranger's voice recalled her. 'Woman! Beware! Thou art full of lies and fury and deceit, yet in the name of the Lord I warn thee. Ere three days have gone by, thou shalt know what is in thine heart; and thou shalt learn the power of that which was, and is, and will be!'

So saying, the unwelcome guest opened the outer door and walked away into the raging storm and darkness,--a less bitter storm it seemed to him now than that created by the violent woman within doors. Some way further on he espied a haystack, under which he lay down, as he had done on many another night before this, and there he slept in the wind and the snow until morning.

Moll, meanwhile, enraged beyond words at the loss of her cream, stalked off for a pail and cloth, and set herself to wash the floor, muttering curses as she did so. Never a glance did she cast at the corner by the fire where little Jan still lay by the hearth-stone, motionless and strangely quiet; he, the restless imp, who was usually so full of life. Never a glance, until, the centre of the floor being at last clean again, Moll, on her knees, came with her pail of soap-suds to the white river that surrounded the corner of the kitchen where Jan lay. A white river? Nay, there was a crimson river that mingled with it; a stream of crimson drops that flowed from the stone under the child's head.

Moll leapt to her feet on the instant. What ailed the boy? She had beaten him, it is true, but then she had beaten him often before this in his father's absence. A beating was nothing new to little Jan. Why had he fallen? What made him lie so still? She turned him over. Ah! it was easy to see the reason. As she flung him from her in her rage, the child in his fall had struck his head against the sharp edge of the hearth-stone, and there he lay now, with the life-blood steadily flowing from his temple.

A feeling that Rough Moll had never been conscious of before gripped her heart at the sight. Was her boy dead? Had she killed him? What would his father say? What would her husband call her? A murderer? Was she that? Was that what the Stranger had meant when he had looked at her with those piercing eyes? He might have called her a liar, at the sight of the churn full of cream, but he had not done so; and little she would have cared if he had. But a murderer! Was murder in her heart?

Lifting Jan as carefully as she could, she carried him upstairs to the small bedroom under the roof, where he usually lay on a tiny pallet by her side. But this night the child's small figure lay in the wide bed, and big Moll, with all her clothes on, hung over him; or if she lay down for a moment or two, it was only on the hard little pallet by his side.

All that night Moll watched. But all that night Jan never moved. All the next day he lay unconscious, while Moll did her clumsy utmost to staunch the wound in his forehead. Long before it was light, she tried to send one of her maids for the doctor; but the storm was now so violent that none could leave or enter the house.

Her Ladyship's order went unheeded. The thirty pounds of butter were never made. But My Lady, who was a mother herself, not only forgave Moll for spoiling her Yuletide festivities, but even told her, when she heard of the disaster, that she need not trouble about the rent until her boy was better.

Until he was better! But would Jan ever be better? Moll had no thought now for either the butter or the rent. The yellow cream might turn sour in every single one of her pans for all she cared, if only she could get rid of this new unbearable pain.

At length, on the evening of the second day, faint with the want of sleep, she fell into an uneasy doze: and still Jan had neither moved nor stirred. Presently a faint sound woke her. Was he calling? No; it was but the Christmas bells ringing across the snow. What were those bells saying? 'MUR-DER-ER' 'MUR-DERER'--was that it? Over and over again. Did even the bells know what she had done and what she had in her heart? For a moment black despair seized her.

The next moment there followed the shuffling sound of many feet padding through the snow. The storm had ceased by this time, and all the world was wrapped in a white silence, broken only by the sound of the distant bells. And now the Christmas waits had followed the bells' music, and were singing carols outside the ale-house door. Fiercely, Moll stuck her fingers in her ears. She would not listen, lest even the waits should sing of her sin, and shew her the blackness of her heart. But the song stole up into the room, and, in spite of herself, something forced Moll to attend to the words:

'Babe Jesus lay in Mary's lap, The sun shone on his hair-- And that was how she saw, mayhap, The crown already there.'

That was how good mothers sang to their children. They saw crowns upon their hair. What sort of a crown had Moll given to her child? She looked across and saw the chaplet of white bandages lying on the white pillow. No; she, Moll, had never been a good mother, would never be one now, unless her boy came back to life again. She was a murderer, and her husband when he returned from the wars would tell her so, and little Jan would never know that his mother had a heart after all.

At that moment the carol died away, and the waits' feet, heavy with clinging snow, shuffled off into the darkness; but looking down again at the head with its crown of white bandages upon the white pillow, Moll saw that this time Jan's eyes were open and shining up at her.

'Mother,' he said, in his little weak voice, as he opened his arms and smiled. Moll had seen him smile like that at his father; she had never known before that she wanted to share that smile. She knew it now.

Only three short days had passed since she turned the Stranger from her doors, but little Jan and his mother entered a new world of love and tenderness together that Christmas morning. As Rough Moll gathered her little son up into her arms and held him closely to her breast, she knew for the first time the power of 'that which was, and is, and will be.'

VI. THE SHEPHERD OF PENDLE HILL

_'On Pendle G.F. saw people as thick as motes in the sun, that should in time be brought home to the Lord, that there might be but one Shepherd and one Sheepfold in all the earth. There his eye was directed Northward beholding a great people that should receive him and his message in those parts.'--W. PENN'S Testimony to George Fox._