Elizabeth Hooton: First Quaker Woman Preacher (1600-1672)

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ELIZABETH HOOTON

American Agents:
DAVID S. TABER, 144 East 20th Street, New York.
VINCENT D. NICHOLSON, Earlham College, Richmond, Ind.
GRACE W. BLAIR, Media, Pa.

This volume is issued
as Supplement 12 to
THE JOURNAL OF THE
FRIENDS HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The Notes collected by the late Mary Radley, of Warwick, for her contemplated “Life of Elizabeth Hooton” seem to indicate a work of much wider scope than I have attempted. Since her research commenced many notable works on the rise of the Society of Friends have been issued which cover the investigations made by her. I have therefore endeavoured to bring together in a collected form the scattered fragments of Elizabeth Hooton’s history, which are to be found up and down, together with many of her letters, or extracts from them, which I believe have never before been published.

Many kind friends have materially assisted in the work, and I desire gratefully to acknowledge their services here: to Norman Penney, F.S.A., and the staff at Devonshire House, London, without whose invaluable help I could not have compiled the little history; to Mrs. Dodsley of Skegby Hall, for her search of the Skegby Manor Rolls, and the Church Registers, also for the illustration of the village which she kindly lent for reproduction; to A. S. Buxton, Esq., for various notes connected with the history of the district and for his unfailing help and interest in the work; to Mrs. Mary G. Swift, of Millbrook, New York, for notes of various authorities; to my cousin, Ethel Barringer, for her sketch of Lincoln Castle Gateway; and to my daughter, Rachel L. Manners, for her photograph of Beckingham Church and her suggestions and advice generally.

For New England History I have drawn largely on Dr. Rufus M. Jones’s recent book, The Quakers in the American Colonies, and for the account of the Quaker persecution in that country my authority has been New England Judged, 1703 edition.

Such is our introduction to the earliest convert of George Fox: one who was destined to travel far in the service of Truth and whose steadfastness, determination, fearlessness and patience are unconsciously revealed in the numerous letters which she wrote. No insignificant place was hers in the long and bitter struggle for religious liberty, and her life’s story has left an indelible mark on the history of the beginnings of the Society of Friends.

An exhaustive examination of the Nottinghamshire Parish Registers shows that the name of Hooton is not an uncommon one and appears in many different places.[2] Ollerton, however, a village situated about eight miles north of Mansfield, seems to have been the home of the family, and here we find definite traces of Elizabeth Hooton. Amongst the names of the owners of Ollerton in 1612, given by Robert Thoroton,[2] an early Nottinghamshire historian, is Robert Hooton, and in 1631 the Parish Register shows that “Robert Hooton Paterfamilias” died. On 11th May, 1628, a certain Oliver Hooton married Elizabeth Carrier; it is uncertain whether this Elizabeth was the convert to Quakerism, for from further entries in the record of Baptisms and Burials it seems probable that there were two men of the same name living in the parish at that time, and in 1629 the wife of one whose name was Elizabeth died: it is clear, however, that later on an Oliver and Elizabeth Hooton were living in Ollerton, for there on 4th May, 1633, “Samuell s. of Oliver and Elizabeth Hooton” was baptized.

Hardly a trace of the seventeenth century village of Ollerton remains except the ancient churchyard; in 1797 Throsby[3] describes Ollerton as follows:

The principal inn still bears the name of “The Hop-pole”—all that remains to tell of the vanished industry,[3] but the ancient forest still surrounds the village, and the quiet stream flows gently on as in the time long past.

Between the years 1633 and 1636 Oliver and Elizabeth Hooton appear to have migrated to Skegby, a village about four miles west of Mansfield. The Parish Registers there show that in 1636 “Thomas [?] yᵉ sonne of Olive Hooton and Elizabeth” was baptized, and in the years 1639 and 1641 the names of John and Josiah appear. There is no entry of the births of her two children, Oliver and Elizabeth, so possibly they were born at Ollerton between the years 1633 and 1636, when no entries appear in those Registers.

The owners of the village of Skegby in 1612 were stated by Thoroton to be “William Lyndley Gent: Lord of the Mannor, Roger Swinstone, Clark, Richard Tomlinson, William Butler, Francis Swinstone, Will. Osborne, James Cowper of Tibshelf, Thomas Jackson of Askham,” and as the name of Hooton does not appear on the Manor Rolls it is evident Oliver Hooton did not own the property on which he settled. In 1650 Thomas Lyndley of Skegby was appointed a Commissioner to assess the fines of confiscated Royalist estates. Thomas Lyndley applied for and received a licence for the holding of Divine service in part of his house. This particular building still remains (1914) and is now used as a laundry for Skegby Hall.

Francis Chapman, in his return made in accordance with the order issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury, July 1669, “to enquire after all Conventicles, or unlawful meetings under pretence of religion and the worship of God, by such as separate from the unitie and conformitie of the Church as by law established,”[4] says:

Possibly it was with these last-named people Elizabeth Hooton associated before her meeting with George Fox, for it is evident from the following[5] that she had dissociated herself from the Church before that time and joined a Baptist community:

The memorable meeting with George Fox in 1646-7 changed the whole tenour of her life. At first she met with opposition at home.

During these years Fox appears to have spent much time in Mansfield and the neighbourhood, and in his Journal at this period are noted some of his deepest religious experiences. Here was revealed to him that over the sorrow and suffering, the sin and pain, of the world,—“the ocean of darkness and death,” as he termed it, there for ever flowed the infinite ocean of God’s light and love; and this perception brought added strength, for he tells us, “I had great openings”; and who can doubt that this deeper spiritual experience and its resultant strength proved an inspiration to his early disciple?

The rapid development of the Mansfield of to-day has brought many changes, and but little remains to remind one of the seventeenth century town. The “steeple house” mentioned by Fox has been restored but its interesting features have been preserved; near it there still stands on old house, a survival of the past in the midst of modern surroundings, which was undoubtedly in existence when he walked “by the steeple house side in Mansfield.” Hard by lived Elizabeth Heath, that benefactress to the town whose thoughtful charity has brightened the lives of so many aged pensioners. Though it does not appear that she ever openly joined the followers of Fox, she still held their honesty and probity in such high esteem that she appointed all the trustees of her charity from amongst them, and to-day the trust is still administered by members of the Society of Friends.[7]

In the year 1649 George Fox suffered imprisonment at Nottingham and in his “Short Journall”[8] we read: “There came a Woman to mee to the Prison & two wᵗʰ her and said yᵗ shee had been possessed two and thirty years.” He goes on to describe her symptoms and how “the Priests had kept her, and had kept fasting days about her, and could not do her any good.” After his release from prison he bade “friends have her to Mansfield.” Her conduct there was apparently so extraordinary that she

Shortly after this time Elizabeth Hooton’s active ministry commenced and bonds and bitter persecutions awaited her. At Derby in 1651 she suffered imprisonment for “speaking to one of the Priests there, who so resented her Reproof that he applied to the Magistrate to punish her. For it is common with Men who most deserve Reprehension, to be most offended with those who administer it.”[9] Although 1651 is the date given,[7] there is preserved a letter from E. Hooton written from Derby gaol and bearing two endorsements, the first in the handwriting of George Fox: (1) “To the meir of darby from Elliz: hoton 1650.” (2) “This was sent to the meir of darby from Goodde hutton.” The letter consists entirely of religious exhortations, and is similar to many others bearing her signature. It concludes: “Would you have me put in beale wᶜʰ have not trensgresed your lawe nor mes be haved my selfe—Conseder is this the Good ould way that you was touth [taught?].” It is addressed to “noaH Bullocke of derby in the towne” and is chiefly interesting as the earliest letter of hers known to be in existence, addressed to a public official.[10]

There is no record of the length of her imprisonment at Derby but in 1652 she was committed to York Castle for speaking in the Steeple House at Rotherham and remained there for sixteen months. There are interesting allusions to Elizabeth Hooton and her husband in letters from Thomas Aldam[11] written from York Castle in the above year; he says:[12]

There are two letters signed by Elizabeth Hooton which were probably written at this period. The first is as follows:[17]

The second of the two letters is a plea on behalf of James Halliday,[19] of Northumberland, imprisoned in York Castle:[20]

In a very vigorous and lengthy letter[21], endorsed by Fox: “e hoten at the gale at yorke to olefer Cromwell 1653,” in which she describes herself as a Prisoner of the Lord at York Castle, she reminds the Protector:

She denounces in no measured terms the corruptness of Judges, Magistrates, teachers and clergymen and all officers and gaolers and compares them to Herod and Pontius Pilate; and continues:

She next complains of the way she and her fellow sufferers for the Truth are treated and tells the Protector: “Wee have not that Libertie that Paull had of the Heathenish Romans.” She then appeals to him as follows:

Much more follows in the same strain, mingled with warnings of the woes that will come upon him and the nation generally if justice is not done. The whole is a very good example of the epistolary methods of the period, and at the same time throws an interesting light on the condition of prisoners, and the way Justice was administered—or rather not administered—during the Commonwealth.

A Tract entitled, False Prophets and false Teachers described, signed by Thomas Aldam, Elizabeth Hooton, William Pears, Benjamin Nicholson,[22] Jane Holmes, and Mary Fisher; “Prisoners of the Lord at York Castle, 1652,” is an eloquent testimony to their unceasing activity in Truth’s service.[23]

Another detailed account of this imprisonment is given in a further letter, sealed and directed: “ﬀor Capt Stodard at his house in Long Aley in more fields this đ đ đ in London.” E. Hooton writes:[24]

At what period her liberation from York Castle took place is as yet undetermined—on the 11th June, 1653, she wrote from the Castle to George Fox,[25] but when free, undeterred by this imprisonment, she went forward in her religious service. Here follow some glimpses of her further labour and suffering.

Besse has no record of the above-mentioned imprisonment of Elizabeth Hooton, so possibly it was not of long duration.

In the year 1654 George Fox says: “I came to Balby; from whence several Friends went with me into Lincolnshire; of whom some went to the steeple-houses and some to private meetings.”[28]

From the following interesting entry in an early Lincolnshire minute book[29] it appears likely that John Whitehead[30] and Elizabeth Hooton were of this company:

According to Besse, E. Hooton was the first sufferer for the Truth in Lincolnshire.[31]

There is an imperfect letter from Elizabeth Hooton in existence, which, though undated, appears to belong to this period and naturally finds a place here. It is endorsed: “E. H. Prisoner in Lincolne Castle, pleads to him in Authority to reforme the abuses of yᵉ Goal,” and contains a striking description of the state of the gaols of the Commonwealth and of the many abuses connected with their management.[32] Her protests against strong drink, her plea for the separation of the sexes and for the employment of the prisoners reads more like an appeal from Elizabeth Fry two centuries later.

George Fox, after his missionary visit into Lincolnshire, accompanied by Robert Craven, the Sheriff of Lincoln (who had been convinced by his preaching) and by Thomas Aldam, passed into Derbyshire and thence into Nottinghamshire to Skegby, “where,” he records, “we had a great meeting of divers sorts of people: and the Lord’s power went over them and all was quiet. The people were turned to the spirit of God, by which many came to receive his power, and to sit under the teaching of Christ their Saviour. A great people the Lord hath in[16] these parts.”[33] No mention is made of Elizabeth Hooton, possibly she was in Lincolnshire at the time, but it may be that her fostering care of the infant Church and her unwavering steadfastness to the Truth which she had received had been mainly instrumental in raising up “a great people to the Lord.” In 1655 we know she was again in Lincolnshire, but the brief entry in the Lincoln Minute Book appears to be the only record of her labours in that county at this period. She was one of the first Quaker preachers to visit Oxfordshire as evidenced by an early Minute which runs: “Also Eliz Hutton, a good ould woman, came and vised us early.”[34]

In 1657 her husband, Oliver Hooton, died. The entry in the digest of Friends’ burial registers preserved at Nottingham reads:

This is confirmed by the Parish Register at Skegby where he is described as the Elder, but there is a slight discrepancy as to day and month, the latter stating he was buried 24th July, 1657.[35]

At an early date Friends acquired a Burial Ground at Skegby where members of the Society from the district were interred. The entries in the Register show that many Mansfield Friends were buried there, for until Elizabeth Heath gave a piece of ground as a burial place in 1693, Friends of Mansfield had no place of sepulture there.

Quite recently, in the course of repairs to the house at Skegby, which up to 1800 was the property of Friends and was known as the Meeting House, and by some was believed to be the house in which Elizabeth Hooton lived, a stone used as a shelf in the pantry was found on which there were remains of an inscription and the date 1687. An old lady of Skegby, aged ninety-eight, states[17] that she fancies she can remember seeing some tombstones in the garden which covers the site of the old graveyard.

With this incident, the record of her early service in England ends. We next follow her in her perilous journeyings in a distant land.

Fierce and cruel as was the persecution in England it was far exceeded by the tortures which awaited the first Quaker missionaries in the New World. Barely fifty years earlier the Pilgrim Fathers had left the homeland and gone forth into an unknown wilderness, there to establish freedom of worship; their descendants, by bitter persecution of the Quakers, demonstrated their failure—in spite of their own sufferings—to learn the lesson of religious toleration. The general attitude of those in authority in the Colonies is very well pourtrayed in the writings of the Rev. Mr. Ward, of Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1645: “It is said that men ought to have liberty of conscience and that it is persecution to debar them of it. I can rather stand amazed than reply to this. It is an astonishment that the brains of a man should be[19] parboiled in such impious ignorance”; and, further, John Callender, writing in 1739, said that in 1637 “the true Grounds of Liberty of Conscience were not then known or embraced by any Sect or Party of Christians.”[37]

The early history of the New England Colony shows that, some years before the advent of the Quakers, religious differences had arisen amongst the Colonists, and a certain section of the community had not escaped persecution. Anne Hutchinson, a brave and intrepid woman, had boldly protested against what might almost be termed a purely theological religion and the extreme power which was of necessity vested in the priest, which was the basis of the Puritan faith. Dr. Rufus Jones states the differing points of view very clearly:[38]

Anne Hutchinson was arraigned before a General Court of all the ministers, held in Boston in 1637. She defended herself with great ability, but without avail, in fact it is very possible that such unusual temerity on the part of a woman may have been largely responsible for the severity of the sentence passed upon her, for she was condemned to banishment and declared excommunicate. As the exiled outcast woman passed sadly down the aisle, one Mary Dyer[39] joined her and went forth with her, thus taking the first step on that path of suffering which led, twenty-three years later, to the gallows on Boston[20] Common. Anne Hutchinson, after sentence of exile had been pronounced, joined her friends. She had a very considerable following in the new Colony of Aquiday, or Aquidneck, now called Rhode Island, which later became for the persecuted Quakers a veritable “little Zoar,”[40] for these early settlers learned the lesson of religious toleration which was reflected in their laws.[41]

The King’s Commissioners, who visited the Colony about 1664, reported that in Rhode Island “all who desire it are admitted freemen. Liberty of conscience and worship is allowed to all who live civilly. They admitted all religions, even Quakers and Generalists, and is generally hated by other Colonies.”[42]

Not only was Rhode Island a city of refuge for the persecuted Quakers, but their message was sympathetically received by many in the Colony. Anne Hutchinson did not live to witness the sufferings of the Quakers, as she and several members of her family were murdered by[21] the Indians in the autumn of 1643; her sister Katharine Scot,[43] however, early joined the new sect; she is described as “a Mother of many Children, one that had lived with her Husband, of an Unblameable Conversation, and a Grave, Sober, Ancient Woman, and of good Breeding, as to the Outward, as Men account.”[44] She came from Providence, Rhode Island, to Boston on hearing of the sentence passed on three young men who, for the crime of being Quakers, were condemned each to the loss of an ear; on account of her comments thereon she was cast into prison and received “Ten Cruel Stripes with a three-fold-corded-knotted-Whip,” and warned that “if she came thither again they were likely to have a law to hang her,” to which she replied: “If God call us, Wo be to us, if we come not; And I question not, but he whom we love, will make us not to count our Lives dear unto our selves for the sake of his Name.”[45] Truly she and her sister Anne Hutchinson came of heroic stock.

In 1656 the first Quaker preachers in the persons of Mary Fisher and Anne Austin[46] arrived at Boston. In consequence of the many wild rumours which had reached the Colony of the strange actions and teaching of the Quakers in England, they were detained on shipboard and their luggage searched for Quaker books or tracts. Several were found and these were ordered to be burned by the common executioner, and the women themselves were stripped and examined to see if they bore upon them marks which should prove them to be witches. They were detained in gaol for about five weeks and then deported again to Barbados. Their inhospitable reception did not in the least[22] quench the missionary zeal of the early Friends, and very shortly after, eight more arrived on the shores of New England, who, after two days’ examination, were sent back to England by the ship on which they came. The authorities of Boston then passed a law inflicting a fine of £100 on any shipmaster who knowingly conveyed a Quaker to the Colonies. This law failed as a deterrent, many Quakers obtaining an entrance to the Colonies, and still fiercer became the persecution. A strengthening of the law was deemed necessary and it was further decreed:

This law was proclaimed by beat of drum before the house of Nicholas Upsall[47] who was rightly suspected of sympathy with the hated sect; he protested against the law and suffered banishment in consequence. In 1657 the law was again strengthened; and if a male Quaker, after he had once been banished, returned again to New England, he was to suffer the loss of one ear and to be kept in the House of Correction, and every woman was to be severely whipped and consigned to the same place. This law was to apply to “every Quaker arising from amongst ourselves” as well as to “Foreign Quakers.” Three men suffered the penalty of loss of their ears at Boston. Further laws were made and[23] penalties inflicted for meeting together to worship God after the manner of Friends. In 1658, in addition to the penalties already inflicted, any of the “Sect of Quakers,” after a trial by a special Jury and conviction by same, were to be sentenced to death.

In spite of, or rather because of these harsh laws and the inhumanity with which they were administered, the Quaker community rapidly increased; thus we are told[48] that

The authorities quickly noticed these abstentions from public worship and warrants were issued under a law of 1646, the offenders being fined for non-attendance 5s. a week; and on a second examination, after the Clerk of the Court had perverted their explanation as to their belief in the doctrine of the Inward Light, three of their number—Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick, with Josiah their son[49] (“all of a Family to terrifie the rest”) were sent to Boston, and there in the House of Correction were “caused to be Whipp’d in the coldest Season of the Year with Cords, as those afore, tho’ two of them were Aged People.”[50]

Many examples of the ferocity with which the Quakers were treated in the New England Colonies might be cited, yet so inspired were these early pioneers with the deep significance and importance of their message that they were compelled to brave the untried wilderness paths and surmount difficulties which we in these days might be tempted to deem insurmountable, in order to deliver it; women with their babes at the breast would[24] not hesitate to undertake “a very sore Journey, and (according to Man) hardly accomplishable, through a Wilderness above Sixty Miles,” knowing that it led inevitably to stripes and bondage and possible death; yet in spite of all, we are told of one such that she was enabled to kneel down and pray in the spirit of the Master for the forgiveness of her cruel persecutors. This “so reached upon a Woman that stood by, and wrought upon her, that she gave Glory to God, and said that surely she could not have done that thing, if it had not been by the Spirit of the Lord.”[51]

The Quakers still continued boldly to preach, and persecution waxed fiercer and fiercer. The Chronicler says: “Their lives (as men) became worse than Death and as living Burials.” The offences for which Friends suffered so severely were of a most trivial character, such as non-attendance at Public Worship for which they had been previously fined, and for not removing their hats. In the event of their refusal to pay any fines which might be imposed they became liable under a law made on accounts of debts, by which it was permissible to sell those persons who refused or were unable to pay their fines “to any of the English Nations as Virginia or Barbadoes to Answer the said Fines.”

Worse was to follow—in June, 1659, William Robinson, of London, Merchant, and Marmaduke Stevenson, a country-man from East Yorkshire, under a religious concern, passed from Rhode Island to Boston, where with an aged man named Nicholas Davis[52] they were speedily imprisoned, Mary Dyer, who came from Rhode Island, sharing the same fate; there they remained until the sitting of the Court of Assistants, when they were sentenced to banishment, and should they be found within the Jurisdiction of the Court after the 14th of September following they were condemned to death. They were kept prisoners till the 12th of September. Mary Dyer and Nicholas Davis “found freedom to depart” out of the Province; but William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson “were constrained in the love and power of God not to depart,” so they passed out[25] of prison to Salem and remained there and at Piscataway and the parts thereabouts in the service of the Lord. On the 13th of October they returned to Boston “that metropolis of Blood” as it was styled, and with them Alice Cowland, “who came to bring Linnen to wrap the dead bodies of them who were to suffer.” Several other Friends joined them and the Chronicler tells us: “These all came together in the Moving and Power of the Lord as one, to look your Bloody Laws in the Face,” and to accompany those who should suffer by them. Mary Dyer had returned also and on the 19th of the same month she, with William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson, was condemned to death. On the 28th of the same month they were led forth to execution, by the back way, we are told, for the authorities were afraid “of the fore way lest it should affect the people too much.” Drums, too, were beaten, so that no words from the prisoners might be heard; we are told that they came “to the place of Execution Hand in Hand, all three of them as to a Weding-day, with great Chearfulness of Heart.” The two men were hanged, but Mary Dyer was reprieved at the last moment, by petition of her son, only to suffer the death penalty a few months later.

Yet another martyr was to seal his testimony with his blood—William Leddra, described as of Barbados but a native of Cornwall, was executed at Boston the 14th of March, 1660/61, under the law of banishment, who, before his final trial, had suffered much persecution and grievous cruelty. His beautiful and saintly nature is revealed in a letter written by him “To the Society of the little Flock of Christ,” dated from Boston prison the day before his execution; therein is no fierce denunciation of his persecutors, but words of consolation and hope to his sorrowing friends.[53]

A contemporary letter, printed in New England Judged, is extremely interesting as showing the unbiassed opinion given by an entire stranger of the sentence passed upon this saintly man. So moved was he by the scene at the execution that he was impelled to remonstrate with those in authority. The letter is from Thomas Wilkie to his friend, George Lad, “Master of the America, of Dartmouth, now[26] at Barbados,” dated Boston, 26th of March, 1661. It is as follows:[54]

A bold protest, boldly made; the Chronicler, to our regret, is silent as to the fate of the protester.

Soon after the Restoration, Charles II., “judging it necessary that so many remote Colonies should be brought under uniform inspection for their future regulation, security and improvement,” signed a Commission appointing thirty-five members of Privy Council, the nobility, gentry and merchants, a Council for Foreign Plantations. (Calendar of State Papers Colonial). Wide powers were vested in this Council, any five members were empowered to “inform themselves of the condition of Plantations and of the Commissions by which they were governed as well as to require from any Governor an exact account of the constitution of his laws and government, number of inhabitants and any information he was able to give.” The Commissioners were also “to provide learned and orthodox ministers to reform debaucheries of planters and servants and instruct natives and slaves in the Christian faith.” The first meeting was held 7th of January, 1661, when Committees were appointed for the several Plantations; attention was first directed to the New England Colonies, and information, petitions and relations of those who had been sufferers were laid before the Council. At a subsequent meeting held on 11th of March, 1661, Captain Thomas Breedon, who had returned from New England in 1660, appeared and reported as to conditions in Massachusetts Colony. He presented a book of the Laws of the Colony which were stated to be by patent from the King, but he had never seen the patent and did not know whether they acted in accordance with the same. “Distinctions between freemen and non-freemen, members and non-members, is as famous as Cavaliers and Roundheads was in England, and will shortly become as odious. The grievances of the non-members who are really for the King, and also some of the members, are very many.”

In Breedon’s report, too, we have symptoms of discontent and disaffection—heralds of the storm which a hundred years later broke, and severed for ever the American Colonies from the mother-land. He continues:

That there was considerable doubt in the minds of those in authority in New England as to the manner in which the news of their high-handed and ferocious persecution of the Quakers would be received by the Home Government is evident from a letter written by Captain John Leverett, London Agent for Massachusetts, to Governor Endicott and the General Court, 13th of September, 1660. After some discourse on other matters he continues:

News of the sufferings of Friends in New England had indeed reached their Friends in the old country; Edward Burrough[55] had obtained audience of the King and represented in powerful though simple language the story of their inhuman treatment. His appeal resulted in the issue of a Mandamus by the King, dated Whitehall, 9th day of September, 1661, to John Endicott, and the Governors of the other Colonies,[56] commanding that all Quakers condemned to death or imprisoned should be sent to England for trial; Edward Burrough urged that this order should be sent with all speed, but the King objected, in his usual spirit of procrastination, that he had “no occasion at present to send a ship thither.” Burrough, however, was given permission to send the Mandamus by the hand of a messenger of his own choosing;[29] he at once decided that Samuel Shattuck,[57] of Salem, a Quaker exile from the Colony, should return as the bearer of the King’s message. English Friends at once chartered a vessel belonging to Ralph Goldsmith,[58] himself a Quaker. After a tempestuous voyage of six weeks the vessel reached the American shore. As she lay anchored in Boston Harbour one Sunday morning in October, 1661, Captain Oliver,[59] a Boston official, boarded her, and on his return to the town it is said he reported: “There is Shattock and the Devil and all.” The Mandamus was delivered in person by Samuel Shattuck to Governor Endicott and the immediate result was that, shortly after, many Quaker prisoners were set at liberty.[60] Whittier, in his poem, The King’s Missive, gives us a beautiful word picture of the incident and its setting; one can imagine how the weary prisoners “paused on their way to look on the martyr graves by the Common side,” and how surpassingly lovely the landscape seemed to[30] eyes so long accustomed to the gloom of the prison-house for

And with awe and deep humility we can enter in some faint degree into their silent yet fervent thanksgiving for “the great deliverance God had wrought,” and ah! how vividly we can picture how

Into the heat of this persecution Elizabeth Hooton with her companion, Joan Brocksopp,[61] had ventured. They suffered imprisonment in Boston prison on account of visiting Friends confined there, and were liberated with twenty-five others, after the receipt of John Leverett’s warning letter to Governor Endicott and the General Court.

But we will let Elizabeth Hooton give the story of her call to the service, her journeyings and the hardships she endured on the American Continent, in her own words:[62]

Two contemporary letters to Margaret Fell[66] give us a glimpse of the travellers in Barbados. Joan Brocksopp, writing from that island, 9th of August, 1661, says:[67] “We came here about A week since. We expect to Returne thether [Boston] agayne. Elizabeth Houtton dearly saluts thee.”

An account of Elizabeth Hooton and her companion’s sufferings and the perils they passed through is given in New England Judged, but this account somewhat lacks the vivid touches of the autobiographical narrative given above. In the following words the travellers conclude the record of their experiences:[70]

Joan Brocksopp, too, adds her testimony, and in her Lamentation for New England writes:[71]

And so at length after many hairbreadth escapes, “Elizabeth,” in the words of the old Chronicler, “having also suffered for her Testimony to the Truth returned to old England and abode some space of time at her own Habitation.”[72]

A perilous journey for two women, neither of them young, to undertake, and one marvels at the high courage and faith, and the deep sense of the guiding hand of God, which sent them forth “looking death in the face” to deliver the message of their Lord.

To one of Elizabeth Hooton’s temperament it was obviously impossible that there should be any long period of rest after her arduous journeyings, and we soon find her dauntlessly remonstrating with magistrates, visiting prisoners, and appearing before King Charles II. About this period she rented a farm near Syston or Sileby in Leicestershire, which was worked for her by her son Samuel, its assessable value being £5. In 1662 we find that Samuel was “taken at a meeting” possibly at that place and thrown into Leicester prison, and from him were taken “three mares with geares.” This distraint is the subject of many letters to the King, the Lord Chamberlain, and various other people. On reading these epistles one is frequently reminded of the unjust judge and the importunate widow; it is not at all clear that she received reparation, though her numberless[36] appeals, one would have thought, might have proved sufficiently wearisome.

The following is E. Hooton’s own account of one interview with the King, perhaps the first:[73]

This letter gives sufficient evidence of her determination and the fearlessness of her methods of procedure; an account which reads strangely to-day, when one considers the difficulty of access to the Sovereign and the forces and formalities which guard and hedge him about.

Another letter, undated, addressed “To you yᵗ are Judges or Magistrates in yᵉ Court,” possibly belongs to this period. Elizabeth, in very plain language, calls attention to the licentiousness of the times.[74]

Although Charles II. had by his Mandamus issued in 1661 obtained some remission of the cruelties practised against the Quakers in Massachusetts, he appears to have quickly repented his clemency, for in an Order in Council, issued 28th of June, 1662, after acknowledging the receipt of an Address from that Colony and confirming the Patent and Charter granted by his father, he continues:

Undeterred by the prospect of further persecution and the improbability of the King again intervening on behalf of the Quakers, Elizabeth Hooton once more believed herself called of the Lord to visit New England. This time she carried with her a licence from the King “to purchase land in any of his plantations beyond the seas.” One cannot help suspecting that King Charles, wearied with her importunities, had hit upon this method of ridding himself of the necessity of an enquiry into the high-handed proceedings of the Leicestershire magistrates, of which she had so vigourously complained, and that it would be a matter of perfect indifference to him whether she succeeded in making good the purchase in the Boston Courts, or not. Fortunately, again, the account of her journey and her sufferings can be given in her own words. She says:[75]

Afterwards was J moved of yᵉ Lord & called by his spᵗ to goe to New England againe, & tooke wᵗʰ me my Daughter to beare there my 2ᵈ Testimony, where when yᵉ persecutoʳˢ understood J was come they would have fined yᵉ ships Mʳ 100ˡⁱ, but yᵗ he told them J had been wᵗʰ yᵉ King & thither was J come to buy an house so stopped them from seizing on his goods, when J had been a while in yᵉ Country among ﬀriends, then came J up to Boston to buy an house & went to their Courts 4 times but they denied it me in open Court by James Oliver, who was one of their chief a persecutor, so J told yᵐ yᵗ if they denyed me an house yᵉ King having promised us libertie in any of his plantaçons beyond yᵉ Sea then might J goe to England & lay it before yᵉ King if God was pleased.

So when J returned from them J went up Eastward toward Piscatua & there was imprisoned ﬀor bearing my[40] testimony against Seaborn Cotton[76] yᵉ Priest who sent his Man & tooke a (a 2 yʳᵉ. Heyfer)[77] cow from one of oʳ ﬀriends[78] who owed him nothing & his Church Members tooke from 2 poore men (Eliakim Wardill John Hussey[79])[77] almost all yᵉ estate they had, because of a fine they had put on them for absenting from their Worship, yᵉ one of them they tooke away all yᵉ fatt kines he had & a fat calfe wᶜʰ they feasted themselves wᵗʰ besides 12 bussheles of wheate & provision in his house wᶜʰ was for himself & children & threatned to take away his Children & sell them for ten pounds wᶜʰ they demanded, where also they imprisoned me, & at Salem Haythorne[80] yᵉ ruler whipped foure ﬀrᵈˢ & sought also for me, though afterwards J was moved to cry through yᵉ towne, but had noe power to hurt me at yᵗ time, So at Dover in Piscatua there ﬀor asking Priest Rayner a question when he had done they put me in yᵉ stocks Richᵈ Walden being (deputye)[77] Magistraite (for Dover) (his wife begged the office in mischeife to friends) & put me in prison 4 dayes in yᵉ cold of winter but yᵉ Lord upheld & preserved my life, where my service to yᵉ Lord was profitable for strengthning of friends & leaving yᵉ other wᵗʰout excuse, So more could Stormes did J endure & more persecution then J can expresse, so afterwards J returned to Cambridg, where they were very thirsty for bloud because none had been there before yᵗ J knew of & J cryed repentance through some part of yᵉ towne, So they tooke me & had me early in yᵉ morning before Thomaˢ Danford & Danˡ Goggins 2 of their Magistrates who by their Gailer thrust me in a very dark dungeon for yᵉ space of 2 dayes & 2 nights wᵗʰout helping[41] me to eithʳ bread or water but a frᵈ (Benanuel Bowre)[81] brought me some milk & they cast him into prison because he entertained a stranger & fined him 5ˡⁱ & at 2 dayes end they fetch me to their Court & asked me who recᵈ me J said, if J had come to his House J should have seen if he would have recᵈ me for J was much wearied wᵗʰ my travel & they ought to entertaine strangers so J asked whethʳ he would not receive me wᶜʰ he did deny then J said sell me an House or let me one to rent yᵗ J may entertane strangers & laid yᵉ Kings promisse before them concerning libertie we should enjoy beyond yᵉ seas, but they regarded it not, but made a Warrant to whip me for a wandring vagabond[82] Quaker at 3 townes 10 stripes at whipping poast im Cambridg & 10 at Watertowne & 10 stripes at Deddam at yᵉ Carts tayle wᵗʰ a 3 corded whip 3 knotts at end, & a handfull of willow rods at Watertown on a cold frosty morning So they put me on a horse & carried me into yᵉ wildernesse many miles, where was many wild beasts both beares & wolves & many deep waters where J waded through very deep but yᵉ Lord delivered me, though J ware in yᵉ night to goe 20 miles but he strengthned me over all troubles & feares, though they caried me thither for to have been devoured, Saying they thought they should never see me againe.

So being dilivʳed J gott among oʳ frᵈˢ through much danger by yᵉ watʳ & after yᵗ to Road Jsland whence J tooke my Daughter wᵗʰ me to fetch my cloathes & othʳ things wᶜʰ was about 80 miles, So when we came there for my Cloaths there Thomas Danford made a Warrant for yᵉ Constable of Charles towne to apprehend us & one of their own Jnhabitʳˢ Sarah Coleman an auntient woman of Scituate where he met us in yᵉ Woods comeing back & he asked us whether we were Quakʳˢ for he said he was to apprehend Quakʳˢ, So J answʳᵈ wilt yᵘ apprehend thou Knowes not who nor for wᵗ, so he said J suppose you are Quakʳˢ therefore in his Majᵗˢ name stand, wᵗ Majesty J asked him he said[42] yᵉ Kings, now said J thou hast told a lye for J was later at yᵉ King then thou & he hath made noe such Lawes, saith he J must take you to Cambridge, but yᵉ ﬀriend yᵗ was inhabiter said she would not goe except he carried her, then he met wᵗʰ a Cart & he comanded yᵐ to aid him & set us all upon yᵉ Cart & caried us away to Cambridg to Daniel Goggings house, but he came not home till night & in yᵉ night they fetcht us before him & a wicked Crew of Cambridg scollars there were yᵗ abused me both times, & Goggins said did not we charg you yee should not come hither, so J said we were forced thither in a Cart, J came thither to fetch my Cloaths, because they would not let me take yᵐ wᵗʰ me. So he asked the Jnhabiter, if she owned me, she said she owned yᵉ truth so he wrote her down for a wandring Vagabond Quaker yᵗ had no dwelling place, & she dwelt but a little way of him, & he knew it & to my daughter he said dost thou own thy Mothʳˢ religion & she said no thing, & he set her downe for a wandring Vagabond Quaker wᶜʰ had not a dwelling place, & J Eliz Hooton was set downe for a wandring Vagabond Quaker, who would have bought a House among them, & this was in yᵉ night, when yᵉ house was full of Cambridg Scollers being a Cage of uncleane birds[83] yᵗ gave us many bad languages & yᵉ Colledg Mʳˢ & priests sons, stood mocking of old Sarah Coleman wᶜʰ had formerly fed them wᵗ yᵉ best things wᶜʰ she & her husband could get, & told her she should be whipt wᵗʰ thwangs & wᵗʰ ends her husband being a Shoemaker, & had given them yᵉ making of their shoes, & mending, thus was she rewarded evill for good, & so sent us all to yᵉ House of correction in yᵉ night, wᶜʰ was a cold open place & had nothing but a little dirty straw, & dirty old cloath.

So early in yᵉ morning before it was light yᵉ Whippʳ a Member of their Church came up, wᶜʰ had said to me before yᵗ yᵉ governoʳ of Boston was his God & yᵉ Magistrates were his God, J answered many Gods many Lords blind sottish Men both Priests & people, & asked us whether we would be whipt there or below, J said wilt thou take our bloud in yᵉ dark before yᵉ people be rissen to see wᵗ thou dost, so he tooke me downe & lockt them up, & said J was acquainted wᵗʰ their whipping because J had been there before. So to yᵉ whipping post he lockt my hands, having 2 men by to beare him Witnesse yᵗ J was whipt before it was light, then fetcht he downe Sarah Coleman[43] being as J thought older then my selfe & whipt her & then my daughter & whipt us each 10 stripes a piece wᵗʰ a 3 corded whip, & said to my Daughter are you not glad now its yoʳ turne she said J am content, so they put her hands in a very streight place wᶜʰ pressed her armes very much, & so this Daniel Goggins yᵉ Magistrate walked out of dore wᵗʰ my Bible in his hand, for it had yᵉ Epistle to yᵉ Laodiceans[84] & other things opening of yᵉ Corruption of translations then he asked me, whethʳ J would promise him to goe to Scituate, J said J submit to yᵉ will of yᵉ Lord wᵗʰ other words J spake why he should whip us so wᵗʰout a Cause, but he ran & made anothʳ warrᵗ & fetcht yᵉ Constable to whip us at other two townes, & yᵉ Constable provided company to goe a long wᵗʰ us, but Sarah Coleman was not able to goe so they got a horse & yᵗ day they went with us from towne to towne.

So when they came to Unketty yᵉ Constable saw it was such a mercilesse thing yᵗ he tooke yᵉ warrant away wᵗʰ him to carrie to Boston, & left one of oʳ frᵈˢ to goe wᵗʰ us. So were we persecuted from place to place till we came to Scituate, so after yᵗ J returned back to Boston, & there was a youngman out of yᵉ North of England wᶜʰ was moved to goe into their Meeting place & breake 2 bottles before them for a signe how they should be broken whom violently they tooke & whipt at yᵉ great Gun in Boston 10 or 12 stripes & as many more in yᵉ house of Correction, & yᵉ next mornḡ they had him away, & J was moved of yᵉ Lord to goe in sackcloath & ashes upon my head to beare my testimony agˢᵗ them in Jndicots house & they put me out of dores & set Bellingam in (in yᵉ place of Jndicote) yᵉ place of persecution, so J was moved to goe along to Billingams house who was yᵉ Deputie, & there bare my testimony agˢᵗ them for shedding Jnocᵗ bloud, So they fetcht me in & J cleared my Conscience to them & he made a mittimg to have me to yᵉ Goale & whip me at yᵉ whipping post so they J told they filled up yᵉ measure of persecution wᶜʰ their Bretheren in England left undone, so there Warrant was to whip me at other two townes, at Rocksbury & Deddam at each 10 stripes apiece, & when J came to Rocksbury yᵉ Constable & yᵉ othʳ ﬀrᵈ met us there yᵗ they might whip him there at the Carts taile where they whipt him & me together, so when they had done wᵗʰ us J bare my testimony & we met yᵉ Priest of yᵉ towne who said he was going to take of our whipping & J asked him his reason he said because we tooke 5ˡⁱ a time for oʳ whipping J asked him where we should have it he answerd in England a Company of lyers they were J said, & yᵉ Constable yᵗ was wᵗʰ[44] us lost both his Warrants & when he came to Deddam he gott him to anothʳ Persecutoʳˢ house yᵗ he might fulfill yᵗ wᶜʰ yᵉ othʳ had lost yᵉ Warrant for, & then they there tyed us both to yᵉ carts taile yᵉ youngman & J in yᵗ cold weather & stript us as usual to yᵉ middle & there whipt us from whence they had us to Medfield, & would fain have whipt us there also, wᶜʰ yᵉ Priest desired & sought much for oʳ bloud but could not obtaine it, So yᵉ Constable wᵗʰ his long sword went wᵗʰ anothʳ man to guard us out of their Jurisdiction, into yᵉ woods & left us to goe 20 miles in yᵉ night among yᵉ Bears & wild beasts & watʳˢ & yet we were preserved & yᵉ Constable when he saw me returne lift up his hands & said he never expected to see me againe, And allwayes they drive us toward Road Jsl being a place of liberty to us.

So afterwards J went to one of their Meeting places & spoke to yᵉ priest when he had done, who sent me to prison, but his wife would never give him rest till he sett me at libertie, so J went up into yᵉ Country among ﬀrᵈˢ so comeing back againe, J was moved oﬀ yᵉ Lord to goe to yᵉ othʳ Meeting place where J stood till they had done, in yᵉ meane time they abused me as J stood, & when he had done J asked yᵉ priest a question, yᵉ people violently flew upon me young & old, & flung me downe on yᵉ ground So J said this was yᵉ fruit of their Ministry, & their Lawes J did deny & being contrary to yᵉ Law of God & yᵉ King & one of their Magistrates had said to me, it was yᵉ Devils Law if it were contrary to Gods Law to take away a poore Mans Cow, So 2 dayes & 2 nights J was in prison & they fetcht me before Bellingam yᵉ Deputy, who sentenced me to be whipt from yᵉ prison dore to yᵉ townes end at yᵉ Carts taile & so all along out of their jurisdiction, wᶜʰ was between 20 & 30 miles, but they whipt me to yᵉ towns end & yᵉ next time J came J was to be hanged, Such a Law had they now made, So when yᵉ Kings Comissionʳˢ came to Boston, they did desire we should Visit them there, So J & othʳ ﬀrᵈˢ rode to Boston & my Horse they tooke away & Windlocks, to carry away yᵉ Comissionʳˢ out of yᵉ towne, though we were called wandring Vagabond Quakers & 3 score mile J had to goe wᶜʰ was towards Road Jsland & they had no power to execute their Law upon me, wᶜʰ was a dangerous voyage not only for me but for one yᵗ was wᵗʰ me, neare to be lost J cannot expresse yᵉ danger J went through in yᵗ voyage though yᵉ Lord delivered us both miraculously praises to his holy Name for ever & for ever, for yᵉ end & purpose of their doing to us was for murther.

7 or 8 more ﬀriends yᵗ came out of England did they thus abuse wᵗʰ horrible whippings & mangling of our bodyes wᵗʰ whips fining imprisoning & banishing into yᵉ Wildernesse yᵗ when yᵉ snowes were very deep & no tread but wᵗ Wolves had made[45] going before me, & my life neare lost many times in yᵉ cold of yᵉ winter & yᵉ hazard of the Journeys, & thus have they used us English people, as Vagabond Rogues & wandring Quakʳˢ wᶜʰ had not a dwelling place wᶜʰ were true borne English people of their own Nation, yet had yᵉ Jndians wᶜʰ were barbarous savage people, wᶜʰ neither knew God nor Christ in any profession have been willing to receive us into their Wigwams, or houses, when these professoʳˢ would murther us, so in comeing back againe from my dangerous Jour[ney] for want of my Horse, wᶜʰ yᵉ Kings Comissionʳˢ would not have had if they would have found them any other & so me they put in prison, & tooke me out of prison in yᵉ night to yᵉ ship because they heard J was to goe away, but in yᵉ morning very early they sent their Constables to search for Quakers, & found 4 of oʳ ﬀriends in their beds & had them before their Rulers Bellingam & yᵉ rest, & asked them wᵗ they came thither for who said they came to visit yᵉ Kings Comissionʳˢ but they said they would whip yᵉ Comissionʳˢ upon yᵉ Quakʳˢ backs, & so they whipt us very grievously at 3 towns & out of their Jurisdiction they put us & kept one of yᵐ wᶜʰ was an inhabitant of yᵗ Country in prison, but yᵉ Kings Comissionʳˢ were grieved at wᵗ they did unto them, because they knew yᵗ their enmity was to them as well as to us, but they durst not do yᵗ to them, wᶜʰ they did unto us least yᵉ Country had risen agˢᵗ them, ﬀor oʳ Kingdome is not of this world, therefore his servᵗˢ could not fight, but we have comitted oʳ Cause to God who hath & wil defend it to his glory: for yᵉ defence of their ﬀaith yᵗ are yᵉ persecutoʳˢ, were Goales & whips ﬀines & banishmᵗˢ & their gallowes on wᶜʰ they hanged foure, & their persecuting powers wᶜʰ ﬀaith is at an end, when another power comes over their heads, this was New Englands ﬀaith, wᶜʰ was full of cruelty, more then J can expresse by writing wᶜʰ J did receive being an old womⁿ being about 3 score years old, had not yᵉ Lord been on my side J had utterly failed.

Blessed be yᵉ Lord for ever & ever yᵗ hath brought me to England againe to my Native Country & amongst Gods people, where we are refreshed together yᵗ J may never forget his mercy whose Name is in yᵉ flesh

Elizab. Hooton.

This wᶜʰ J have declared is yᵉ worke of Cains ofspring part of wᵗ they have done to yᵉ Jnnocent. So J end for yᵉ present.

The story of the help given by Elizabeth Hooton to the King’s Commissioners, referred to in the foregoing narration, is told more fully in a letter “To the King and Counsell,” written presumably after her return home;[46] but before quoting this it may be well to consider the reasons for the appointment of the Commissioners as gleaned from the Calendar of State Papers. It will be remembered that as early as 1661 evidence was taken respecting alleged grievances in the Colonies, after many delays and recommendations as to the best way of dealing with the disaffection that was rife there; the Lord Chancellor drew up a paper of “Considerations in order to the establishing of His Majesty’s interests in New England.”

In April, 1663, the King in an Order in Council made a similar Declaration, at the same time promising to preserve the Massachusetts charter though he wished to know how it was maintained on the part of the Province.

Another year elapsed before Charles II. signed Commissions and Instructions, in April, 1664, “for Richard Nicolls, Sir Robert Carr, George Cartwright and Samuel Mavericke to visit the Colonies of New England and determine all complaints and appeals for settling their peace and security.” An elaborate letter to the Governor and Council was sent by the King explaining his reasons for sending the Commissioners. He commanded that his letter should be communicated to the “Council and to a General Assembly to be called for that purpose, and while desiring their co-operation and assistance he declared that he doubted not they would give his Commissioners proper reception and treatment.” Strong opposition, however, awaited them on their arrival in Piscataqua; there was a suspicion abroad that the Colonies were to be taxed for the support of the Crown, and wagers were freely laid that the Commissioners would never sit in Boston. Rather than risk open defiance these gentlemen decided that it would be wiser to visit the other three Colonies first, “as they thought if they had good success there Massachusetts would also give them a good reception.” Their visitation extended over two years, when they were recalled. The King expressed his satisfaction with the reception given to his Commissioners except in the case of Massachusetts, and express commands were issued to the “Governor and others of that Colony to[47] attend the King and answer their proceeding.” These commands were never obeyed, one excuse being that “Governor Bellingham was nearly eighty years of age and had many infirmities.”

Elizabeth Hooton’s account, as given in the following letter, is an interesting contribution to the history of the controversy. She writes as follows:[85]

Further particulars of the seizing of her horse for the use of the King’s Commissioners are given in the following fragment; possibly her acquaintance with George Cartwright was largely responsible for the restoration of the animal. She says:[86]

There is another letter to the Lord Chamberlain again recounting her services to the King’s Commissioners and on the strength of those services pleading for justice to herself. The letter is endorsed:[87]

It is especially interesting on account of the following certificate which is attached to it and was delivered with it:

Whilst E. Hooton was in New England some controversy arose respecting Samuel Shattuck, the King’s messenger to the authorities of Boston, the echoes of which may be heard in letters of the period. In March, 1664/5, Shattuck is addressed by Ann Richardson[88] in no measured terms[89]; and at the same time she reports the case to George Fox:[90]

In March, 1664/5, that stern persecutor of the Quakers, John Endicott,[92] died at Boston. Bowden states[93]:

In New England as in the old country, we find E. Hooton foremost in championing the cause of the oppressed, and one marvels again and again at her courage and persistency.

The history of her American journey may be fittingly concluded by extracts from her “Lamentation for Bosston and Camberig Her Sister:”[94]

At the close of his summary of E. Hooton’s sufferings in N.E., William Sewel (1654-1720) writes:[95] “Since which I have several times seen her in England in a good condition.” We can imagine something of the interest the boy in his teens would take at the sight of this ancient warrior of the Cross.

Some time during the year 1665-6 Elizabeth Hooton must have returned to England, for again we find her writing to the King a letter bearing this endorsement, which approximately fixes the date, “This was in the abating of yᵉ Sicknes,” thus showing that it was written in the year of the Plague. An extract from it is interesting, confirming the fact that banishment, and that under terrible conditions, was a punishment to which the Quakers were subjected:[96]

There are in existence letters from E. Hooton’s son Samuel, who about this time believed himself called to pay a religious visit to America, and from one of these we find that although the family had interests in Leicestershire, they still held the farm at Skegby. It is dated: “the 17ᵗʰ day of yᵉ 3ᵈ Mo:[May] 66. From Samuell Hooton, now on yᵉ sea goeing for new England” and is addressed: “To Timothy Garland[97] in Mansfeild Nottingam shʳ ﬀor Oliver Hooton in Skegsby, Wᵗʰ Care.”[98]

The Journal of Samuel Hooton’s visit to New England contains the following interesting allusion to his mother. He had held a large meeting in Boston and in consequence had been taken with many others to the house of the Governor.[99] In the course of his defence he said:[100]

As so many of Elizabeth Hooton’s letters are undated, they are of but slight assistance in determining the order of events in her life, but in an account written by Patrick Livingstone,[101] of his service in Leicestershire, and his subsequent imprisonment in Leicester gaol, we get a glimpse of her still engaged about what she conceived to be “her Master’s business.” Here are extracts from the narrative:[102]

A young man present, having “passed his word,” against the prisoner’s wishes, for his appearance several days later, he was liberated, and during the time other meetings were held and more Friends imprisoned. At what period Elizabeth Hooton comes on to the scenes we are not told, but while the prisoners were detained in an alehouse she

These determined and intrepid “publishers of the Truth” were called away from their meeting one after another to stand before two Justices, on the charge of illegal gathering, and after much argument with the Bench they were fined and imprisoned, E. Hooton’s share being £1 or three weeks. The narrative concludes as follows (p. 38):

It seems probable that Patrick Livingstone visited Elizabeth Hooton at her home at Skegby; his future wife, Sarah Hyfeild, of Nottingham, appears as one of the Friends named for “publicke service” in the Minute Book of the Women’s Quarterly Meeting for Nottinghamshire, which Meeting was “setled” in 1671. The marriage took place in 1676, and the occasion elicited from the Friends of Aberdeen Monthly Meeting a fully-signed liberating certificate, which remains a noble tribute to the bridegroom’s Christian character, and a token of the[57] high esteem and love of his north country friends; Robert Barclay and David Barclay are amongst the signatories.[104]

Accustomed as we are to the easy tolerance of the present day, the echoes of the fierce controversies waged between opposing religious sects during the seventeenth century sound strangely in our ears; Elizabeth Hooton, as one would naturally expect, was not behind in engaging in this wordy war. In 1667 we find her writing:[105]

About 1668, Elizabeth Hooton came into violent conflict with the sect of the Muggletonians. She appears to have written a letter against Lodowicke Muggleton,[106] to which he refers in a letter he sent to her in January, 1668, commencing as follows:[107]

It is only fair to state that if the quotations from the letter written by her to Brocke are correct, her denunciations were equally emphatic.

It is with relief we turn from this phase in her career to find her again pleading the cause of the oppressed, and in statesman-like manner pointing out the evils consequent upon oppression. Here is her letter to the King and both Houses of Parliament:[108]

Elizabeth Hooton also made a point of informing the King as to what was taking place in Nottinghamshire. In one of these letters, after stating that she, an aged woman, had travelled over a hundred miles, and recounting the “greuieous havock” under the “New Act”[109] caused to Friends in London, she continues:[110] “I Brought you A Letter from Nottingham shire to the Kings hall; which sett forth how Greate oppresshon one side of the shier had suffered Amounting to a Boue three hundred pounds, beeing att one meeting....” Apparently there were only two others present besides the family at whose house the meeting was held, and £12 and £15 were taken from them in fines. “They make noe Conscience what they take,” she continues; and she also tells how one magistrate had fined a man twenty pounds for “worshipping of god” and then had ordered his officers to take three or four times as much “beecause they might Sell good peny worthes, and They Tooke Thirty pownds worth of Goods and sent to the same man for Titth wooll and Lambe After they had taken away his sheep.” She tells also of the loss of her own cows.

And we have another letter asking for an order to the Leicestershire magistrates to restore her goods “that J may haue a horse to ride on in my old age.”[113] So many of her appeals are on the same theme that it is exceedingly difficult in making selections to avoid reiteration, but the following addressed to the Lord Chamberlain[114] is so characteristic of her that, in spite of repetition, we hardly like to omit it:[115]

Evidently this letter to the Lord Chamberlain had no effect, for there is a further appeal to the King, mainly interesting as the following names are given as witnesses to the truth of her statement: Thomas Snooden, William Snooden, Timothy Garland, Nicholas House, Nicholas Parsons, Thomas Barradell, Robert Clarke.[117]

She also appeals to the Duke of York, and in the conclusion of a letter to him, she says:[118]

Here is another extract setting forth her opinion of lawyers, and others called upon to administer the law, and also demonstrating her pertinacity in her endeavours to obtain justice. She begins in the customary manner by recounting the history of her visits to the King, and continues:[119]

She did not hesitate boldly to warn the King of his errors, as the following passage shows:[120]

In her efforts to obtain Justice for herself she was never unmindful of the interests of her friends, and in one of her numerous letters to the King and Council she mentions that William Dewsbury, Thomas Goodaire and Henry Jackson, three Yorkshire men, were in Warwick Prison, Francis Howgill in Kendal, and Thomas Taylor in Aylesbury.[121]

In another letter to the King and Council she mentions that there were forty Friends in Reading prison, and that some had been confined there six or seven years.[123]

In yet another letter addressed to the King she makes allusion to the national calamities, and points a lesson therefrom:[124] “If there be not A speedy repentance judgmᵗˢ will ensue, as Late hath been in England yᵉ Pestilence yᵉ Sword & yᵉ Fire.” It was probably written in the year 1667 or 1668, after the arrival of the Dutch ships in the Thames under De Ruyter. Pepys, under date 11th of June, 1667, in his Diary[64] says: “Pett writes us word that Sheerenesse is lost last night, after two or three hours’ dispute,” and he gives a graphic account of the alarm in the city, consequent on the withdrawal of the soldiers to Chatham and elsewhere: “which looks as if they had a design to ruin the City and give it up to be undone; which, I hear, makes the sober citizens to think very sadly of things.” John Evelyn, too, speaking of the Dutch incursion, says: “The alarme was so greate that it put both Country and Citty into a paniq feare and consternation such as I hope I shall never see more; every body was flying none knew why or whither.”

It is pleasant to turn from sufferings and controversies to events of a domestic character in the strenuous life of Elizabeth Hooton. On 21st September, 1669, her daughter Elizabeth, who had been a sufferer with her mother in New England, was married to Thomas Lambert, of Handsworth, at her mother’s house at Skegby. We have more details of this event in the following record:

The names of most of the Friends who signed Thomas and Elizabeth Lambert’s wedding certificate appear again in the book recording the sufferings of Friends in the Mansfield district, and in the early Minute Book of the Women’s Quarterly Meeting for Nottinghamshire.

Fourteen months later, 30th of November, 1670, Elizabeth Hooton’s son Samuel was married to Elizabeth Smedley, of Skegby, at his mother’s house. There is a very interesting entry in the first Nottinghamshire Quarterly Meeting Minute Book in reference to this marriage. Elizabeth Hooton, in assuring the Meeting of her consent to this union, writes,[126] 26th of December, 1670:

As in the case of the daughter’s marriage the names of no women appear amongst the witnesses, but as their mother was in England at this time, she was most likely present at both ceremonies.

In the Episcopal Returns for 1669, we find the name of Elizabeth Hooton among those of “Heads & Teachʳˢ” of the Friends’ Meeting at Harby, Lincs.[127]

About this time too we find E. Hooton intervened in the dispute between Margaret Fell and her son and daughter-in-law, George and Hannah Fell. There are two letters in existence, both evidently addressed to Hannah Fell; one is endorsed: “ﬀor George ﬀells widdow at Marsh Grainge in ﬀurnace,” the other: “To a Woman unnamed, who had got a judgmᵗ agᵗ her mother in law.”[128] From the latter we learn that Elizabeth Hooton must have seen George Fell on the subject of the litigation, for she writes:

The rest of the letter consists of warnings and predictions of what will befall if such unjust conduct is persisted in. It concludes:

Her intervention did not end here, for we find her writing to the King and Council on behalf of Margaret Fox. In an undated letter, after calling their attention to the great distress caused by the Act “which hath ruined many hundred of famylies which cannot now pay Rents taxes nor sesments which did releiue many poore and now is not able to releiue them selues,” she continues:[129]

Undeterred by age, the perils and discomforts of the voyage, or the prospect of bonds and imprisonment which it was possible would be her portion, Elizabeth Hooton, in a letter written from London in conjunction with Hannah Salter[130] to Margaret Fox, a prisoner in Lancaster Castle, speaks of the call she had received to proceed with George Fox and the party of Friends who were intending to visit their brothers and sisters in the faith beyond the seas:[131]

From the above letter we obtain an insight into Elizabeth Hooton’s activities in the year 1670. On the 15th January, 1670, Friends in Nottinghamshire appealed to King and Parliament for the relief of their sufferings, and among the Appellants are Elizabeth Hooton and Elizabeth Hooton, Junr.[133] The latter was, probably, the wife of Samuel, become Hooton only a month or two before.

In these days, when we are constantly reminding those outside our Society of the acknowledgment by our early Friends of the spiritual equality of men and women, it is extremely interesting to note that women were frequently engaged in and actually did carry through negotiations of a very delicate and decidedly secular character. This is proved by George Fox’s account of his wife’s release from Lancaster Castle, which took place in April, 1671; he says:[134]

John Rous, writing to his mother-in-law, Margaret Fox, gives a more detailed account of the proceedings attendant on her release, in a letter dated 4th of April, 1671; he says:[136]

Margaret Fox, after her release from Lancaster, returned to Swarthmoor for a brief period; she then joined George Fox in London for the Yearly Meeting of 1671, and afterwards remained with him, until, three months later, 13th August, he and his little company of twelve set sail “towards America and some of the Isles thereunto belonging.” Elizabeth Hooton and Elizabeth Miers[139] were the only women included in the party.

From George Fox and others we have a very full account of the voyage of the “Catch Industry, Master Thomas Foster.” Margaret Fox and other Friends accompanied the travellers as far as Deal. After these had left the boat her voyage was interrupted by a visit[70] from the “Presse Master” of one of the two men-of-war which were lying in the Downs. He took off three of their seamen which action might have postponed the voyage indefinitely had not the Captain of the other frigate, “out of Compassion and much Civillity,” spared two of his men.

Their vessel was leaky: on the 27th of August this entry appears in the diary of the voyage, kept by John Hull:[140]

Travellers of to-day would probably strongly object to this particular form of health-giving exercise, except under the very sternest necessity.

Then the Journal tells of an apparent “Chace” given by a strange ship which “some conjectur’d by her sayles among the Marriners that it was likely a Sally man of warr, standing of the A sores Ilands, which caused a great feare among some of the passengers, dreading to be taken by them, but friends were well satisfyed in themselves, having no feare upon their spirrits.” George Fox assured the Master when he came “to advise with him and understand his Judgment of it in the power made answer that the life was over all, and the power was betweene them and us.” The Industry escaped attack and eventually they lost sight of the “Sally man.”

Many meetings were also held, some amongst Friends only, and others with the passengers who “seemed to be very attentive.”

At length, after nearly two months, this voyage—not lacking in interest and incident—ended, and the Industry anchored in Carlisle Bay, Barbados, about nine o’clock at night on the 3rd October.

During his stay, George Fox addressed a letter to the Governor of Barbados, defending the Quakers against gross slanders which had been promulgated against them. We[71] have also two letters from Elizabeth Hooton. Whether both were written at this period is uncertain. One is addressed “To the Rulers and Magestrats of this Island that ought to Rule for god.” After general exhortations and warnings, she continues:[141]

The second letter[142] is probably the last she wrote, and was evidently prompted by the same reasons which had influenced George Fox in addressing the Rulers of the Island. It is endorsed: “E. Hooton to some Ruler in Barbado’s 7ᵗʰ of 10/mo 1671 To warne him not to give eare to false reports & yᵉ Priests suggestions agᵗ yᵉ innocent.”

After three months’ stay in that island, on the 8th January, 1671/2, George Fox, accompanied by Elizabeth Hooton and others, left for Jamaica and arrived safely on the 18th.

From the Testimony of James Lancaster[143] concerning Elizabeth Hooton we gather particulars of her illness and death. He says:[144]

And so, still in the thick of the fight, far from her home in the quiet Nottinghamshire village, she fell on sleep. Though her story is so far removed from our own time, something of that peace enters into our souls in the knowledge that her long and strenuous life ended in a great calm.

To our lasting regret the latter injunction never appears to have been carried out, or at any rate the record has been lost, for no history of her, written by a contemporary, remains, and after the lapse of over two hundred and forty years there are necessarily many[74] blanks which can never be filled. George Fox, in his Testimony concerning her, written in 1690, says:[146]

This is amply confirmed by the fragments of her history which remain to us, and from these fragments she emerges a heroic figure, one who worthily played her part in the heroic age of the Society of Friends: always valiant for the truth, quick to seize any opportunity that offered to plead the cause of her fellow sufferers, even though her own sufferings made the occasion—fearless in denouncing the evils of the time—far in advance of the age in which she lived in her advocacy of prison and other reforms, and, though her methods may appear strangely uncouth in our politer days, yet her history is eloquent in its lessons for us, conscious, it may be, that, in the words of Whittier,

Does not the injunction of an earlier writer[148] need special emphasis to-day? “May we not now, in a time of ease and liberty, live carelessly and indifferently towards Him, but in deep reverence and fear worship him, our great Deliverer, who powerfully wrought in the King’s heart to the setting at freedom and liberty these sons and children of the morning!”

Another age, other problems, and as we consider those which confront us to-day, we ask, with Florence Nightingale, “Was there ever an age in so much need of heroism?” and we recognise too that to solve those problems aright we must approach them in the spirit in which Elizabeth Hooton approached the problems of her time, that spirit which prompted her to say:

THE HUSBAND OF ELIZABETH HOOTON (pp. 2, 16)

Several writers on Elizabeth Hooton have stated that her husband was Samuel: James Bowden, Hist. i. 260; A. C. Bickley in D.N.B.; Charlotte Fell Smith in The British Friend, 1893.

Mrs. Manners has come to the conclusion that Elizabeth’s husband was Oliver. She thus states her case:

1. Though an exhaustive search of the Nottinghamshire Parish Registers has been made, I failed to find any marriage of a Samuel Hooton to Elizabeth ⸺ in any years when it would possibly have occurred.

2. At Ollerton (which village is said by Thoroton to have been partly owned by Hootons) I found that in the year 1628 Oliver Hooton married Elizabeth Carrier—and on the 4th of May, 1633, Samuel, son of Oliver and Elizabeth Hooton, was baptized. (Ollerton Parish Registers.)

4. At Skegby in the year 1636 a son was born to Oliver and Elizabeth Hooton, and in succeeding years the children born are described as above.

5. In 1657, in the Friends’ Digest Register, the death of Oliver Hooton is recorded, and under the same year the Skegby Parish Registers record Oliver Hooton the elder buried.

6. We learn from a letter written by Thomas Aldam from York Castle, where he and Elizabeth Hooton were imprisoned in 1652, that E. H.’s husband was living at that time.

7. George Fox in his Testimony concerning E. H. says: “Her husband being Zealous for yᵉ Priests much opposed her, in soe much that they had like to have parted but at Last it pleased yᵉ Lord to open his understanding that hee was Convinced alsoe & was faithfull untill Death.” From this statement I should expect to find the entry of his death in the Friends’ Register. The name of Samuel does not occur in either Register of deaths.

8. The late Mary Radley also arrived at the conclusion that the husband’s name was Oliver, and our investigations were conducted entirely independently.

NOAH BULLOCK (p. 7)

The name of Noah Bullock does not appear in the list of Mayors of Derby given in William Hutton’s History of Derby, ed. of 1791, but the following curious allusion to Bullock occurs in the same work, page 236:

“1676—We sometimes behold that singularity of character which joyfully steps out of the beaten track for the sake of being ridiculous; thus the Barber, to excite attention, exhibited in his window green, blue and yellow wigs, and thus Noah Bullock, enraptured with his name, that of the first navigator, and the founder of the largest family upon record, having 3 sons, named them after those of his predecessor, Shem, Ham and Japhet; and to complete the farce, being a man of property, built an ark, and launched it upon the Derwent, above St. Mary’s-bridge; whether a bullock graced the stern history is silent. Here Noah and his sons enjoyed their abode and the world their laugh. But nothing is more common than for people to deceive each other. The world acts under a mask. If they publicly ridiculed him, he privately laughed at them: for it afterwards appeared he had more sense than honesty; and more craft than either; for this disguise and retreat were to be a security to coin money. He knew Justice could not easily overtake him, and if it should, the deep was ready to hide his coins and utensils. Sir Simon Degge, an active magistrate, who resided at Babington-hall, was informed of Noah’s proceedings, whom he personally knew: the Knight sent for him and told him, ‘he had taken up a new occupation, and desired to see a specimen of his work.’ Noah hesitated. The magistrate promised that no evil should ensue, provided that he relinquished the trade. He then pulled out a sixpence and told Sir Simon ‘He could make as good work as that.’ The Knight smiled; Noah withdrew, broke up his ark, and escaped the halter.”

The family is an ancient one; there are monumental inscriptions in St. Alkmund’s church to Bullocks of Darley Abbey. The name is still represented in the town.

COMMITMENT TO LINCOLN CASTLE (p. 14)

J was gon out of becingham, & was gone to barnbe in Nottingham shire, & as J was warneing some to repent in yᵉ towne, there come a wicked man forth whose name was Atkingson, a proud man, he stroake me unreasonably, then pul’d he me out of my way over a bridge & when J was over he sent[79] to the Preist of becingham to serve his warrant upon me, & wᵗʰ his warrant he sent me to the Justice, & the Justice being a wicked man he sent me to prison to Lincoln goal. The same Preist put another Man friend into prison for tithes, & hee dyed, & his house keeper came through the chamber where the Preist lay, & he sᵈ good morrow Valentine in a vain light condition, & tooke her in his armes to salute her & suddainly the Lord stroak him wᵗʰ death, though he cryed for his bottle of strong waters but it would not save him, thus the hand of the Lord is agᵗ wicked men, both old & young, [they] shall perish if they transgress. Atkingson came to nought alsoe & was taken away suddainly, yet the Lord was with me in prison though J endured a very cold winter, it was God’s mercy in preserving me that winter from being starved to death, & this widdow woman that kept yᵉ goal was full of cruelty towards me & all yᵉ prisoners.

An imperfect paper, yet expressing the Manner of her being sent to Lyncolne Prison: and Gods hand upon yᵉ Priest & Atkinson that were yᵉ cause of her Jmprisonmᵗ there.

UNKETTY (page 43)

An enquiry addressed to Augustine Jones, LL.B., of Newton Highlands, Mass., has brought the following information:

Unquity, or Unquity-quisset was the Indian name for Dorchester, which, in 1662, was incorporated as Milton. It is across the Neponset River from Boston, on the somewhat indirect way from Cambridge to Scituate.

A YOUNG MAN OUT OF THE NORTH OF ENGLAND (p. 43)

This was probably Thomas Newhouse, whose name is included in a list of English Friends visiting N.E., 1661 to 1671 (in the possession of William C. Braithwaite, Banbury, Oxon). The incident is associated with the name of Thomas Newhouse in the histories of Bishop, Besse and Bowden. In Newhouse’s own account of the event and its results, given by Bishop (op. cit. p. 472), we read:

“Upon a Lecture-day at Boston in New-England, I was much pressed in Spirit to go into their Worship-house amongst them.... They cryed, Away with him; and some took me by the Throat, and would not suffer me to answer to it, but hurried me down Stairs, to the Carriage of a great Gun, which[80] stood in the Market place, where I was stripp’d, and tyed to the wheel, and whipp’d with ten Stripes ... and then ... whipp’d ... at Roxbury ... and at Dedham ... and then sent into the Woods.”

In Bishop’s fuller account of this scene, he tells us (op. cit. p. 432) that Newhouse, “having two Glass Bottles in his Hands, dash’d them to pieces, saying to this effect, That so they should be dash’d in Pieces”—a very close parallel with the account given by E. Hooton.

William Edmondson states in his Journal, under date 1672, that the Friends of Virginia were “stumbled and scatter’d by his [Newhouse’s] evil Example ... who went from Truth into the Filth and Uncleanness of the World.” See Jones, Quakers in American Colonies.

It must have been a sorry spectacle—an old woman and a young man, both half naked, tied side by side to the back of a cart, and lashed with a whip of three knotted cords till blood ran.

HOOTON DESCENDANTS

The materials with which to re-erect the house of Hooton are scattered and difficult to identify; the frequent use of the same fore-name is a source of danger; but we venture to place before our readers such facts as at present see the light, in the hope that later research will be aided thereby.

Samuel Hooton

The hand of persecution rested upon him in early life; we find him in prison in Nottingham in 1660 for refusing to take the Oath of Allegiance,[150] and in Leicester in 1662 he was in prison with George Fox and others,[151] being “cast into yᵉ Dungeon amongst yᵉ felons. There was hardeley roome to lye downe they [the prisoners] were soe thronge.”[152] Before reaching the age of thirty he was the objective of Muggletonian curses,[153] as was his mother later; and eight years after, in 1670, as recorded by Besse,[154] restraints were laid upon his goods “for the Cause of religiously Assembling to worship God.”

On the 30th of November, 1670, Samuel Hooton married Elizabeth Smedley, both of Skegby, at the home of the bridegroom’s[81] mother. There were two children born at Skegby, Oliver[155] in 1671 and Elizabeth in 1673.

Of his religious service we have found nothing before his departure for New England early in 1666, as related ante, and the next reference is dated two years later, May, 1668: “one Samuel, son of old Elizabeth Hooten,” is mentioned among “those that labour in the work of the ministry.”[156]

Towards the close of 1670, among signatories to An Appeal from Nottinghamshire, occurs the name Samuel Hooton.

In the Minute Book of Nottinghamshire Quarterly Meeting, at the date, 26 x. (Dec.) 1670, the same date on which his mother wrote the letter given ante, the word “backslider” is written beside the name of Samuel Hooton (see photo. facsimile, p. 75). This was probably done a few years later in connection with the passing of the following minutes by the Nottinghamshire Q.M.:

It is possible that the family emigrated to the Western World. Mrs. Amelia Mott Gummere, of Haverford, Pa., contributes the following, which may refer to the above Samuel:

Of the Hootons of N.J., Mrs. Kate B. Stillé wrote in the Jnl. F.H.S. iv. 50: “Their descendants hold the land near Burlington and Evesham, which was bought from the Indians.”

Elizabeth Hooton, Jr., Afterwards Lambert.

The marriage of the younger Elizabeth with Thomas Lambert, of Tickhill, 21st of September, 1669, is recorded in the Registers of Nottinghamshire, but there is no entry therein of any children or of the deaths of Thomas and Elizabeth Lambert.

We may hazard the suggestion that emigration to the New World removed their names from the Registers of the Old. In the published New Jersey Archives, first series, vol. xxiii., p. 236, we read:

“1692-3, Feb. 20. Hooton John. Letters of administration on the estate of, formerly granted to Thomas Lambert in behalf of his wife, confirmed, notwithstanding application of Richard & Thomas Hilbourne on behalf of Samuel Hooton for it, based on the order of Gov. Hamilton making Elizabeth, the wife of the said Samuel, Thos. Hilbourne and wife Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel, his guardians during his lunacy (N.J. Arch., vol. xxi., p. 193). John White, attorney for Thos. Lambert, submits the affidavit of John Snowden, to whom John Hooton had said, shortly before his death, he did not intend his brother Samuel should have his plantation, while William Black and John Birch attest that deceased had expressed his intention that John, the son of his brother, Thomas Lambert, should have it. (Burlington Records, p. 18.)”

Oliver Hooton

1. Oliver, son of Elizabeth, is mentioned by Fox in his Journal, under date 1672, and he was apparently at home in England at the time (Camb. Jnl. ii. 213).

His “hystry” is referred to on page 4, also his Certificate concerning George Fox.

He wrote a Testimony concerning William Sympson (dropping into verse at the close), on the 16th of February, 1670, printed in A Short Relation ... of William Simpson, 1671.

Thomas and Alice Curwen visited him, and wrote a letter from his house, dated the 12th February, 1676.[158]

In 1677, with other Friends, he signed an Appeal to Governor Atkins on behalf of sufferers for the Truth.[159]

There is a letter in D.[160] from O. Hooton to George Fox, dated “Barbados yᵉ 8: 2ᵈ mᵒ 1682.” References to the writer’s personal[84] history are wanting, but he writes as one who knew Fox, “from the begining of yᵉ apearance of yᵗ Glorious Day, yᵉ dawnings wherof (in our dayes) first made knowne its Splendor through thee.... I have both loved and honored thee from yᵉ first.” The writer is on the eve of a visit “to see yᵉ new Countreys of new Jarsey and Pensilvania,” but he “cannot say to Setle there.”

There does not appear to be sufficient evidence to state that 1 and 2 are the same persons.

3. The Registers of Mansfield Monthly Meeting record the death of Oliver Hooton, son of Samuel and Elizabeth Hooton, 14 xi. 1671, who died at his parents’ house at “Seckby” and was buried at “Skegby.” See page 81, note 1.

Martha Hooton

The name, Martha Hooton, also appears in the records of Barbados—in 1689 she was fined £4 19s. 0d. “for Default of sending a Man and a Horse armed in to the Troop,”[161] and there is in D. a curious manuscript, being a petition from a slave girl named Mama to obtain the freedom granted by her mistress, Martha Hooton, widow, in her will dated “the third day of the fifth Month ... 1704,” she having died on the 8th September of that year.

Thomas Hooton

1. Thomas, son of Oliver and Elizabeth Hooton, was baptized 1636. Of this son, Mrs. Manners writes: “The late Mary Radley thought that Thomas was an older son of Oliver and Elizabeth Hooton, but I think she must have read this name as ‘Timothy.’ Mrs. Dodsley, who searched the Skegby Parish Registers for me, thinks the name given is ‘Thomas,’ and as I have found no mention of ‘Timothy’ in any of the documents I have searched, I am inclined to think Mrs. Dodsley’s surmise is correct.”

2. According to the Friends’ Registers for the County of Lincoln, Thomas Hooton, of Sibsey [? Sibson], Leicestershire, married Mary Sharp of Barnby at the house of John Pidd, at Barnby, Notts, 1662 xii. 15. The Hooton home in Leicestershire was Sileby, and the home of the bride, Barnby, is not far distant from Ollerton, the Notts Hooton home.

3. The following extracts have been taken from the Minutes of Nottinghamshire Q.M.:

4. At a Quarterly Meeting held at Lincoln, 27 x. 1693, the following minute was made: “At this meeting Thomas Hooton sent Twenty Shillings to be disposed of this Meeting received and disposed of at this accordingly.”

5. There was a Thomas Hooton of London, of whom more is known. He and his family emigrated to New Jersey. See Besse’s Sufferings; Clement’s Settlers in West New Jersey, 1877, p. 301; The Friend (Phila.), lxxvii. (1903), p. 52; New Jersey Archives.

John Hooton

Josiah Hooton

JUDGE ENDICOTT (p. 50)

“It was not the people of Massachusetts—it was Endicott and the Clergy”—who persecuted the Quakers.—John Fiske, Beginnings of New England, 1895.

FOOTNOTES

[1] The General History of the Quakers, by Gerard Crœse, 1696, pt. 1, p. 37.

[2] Dr. Robert Thoroton, J.P. (1623-1678), published his Antiquities of Nottinghamshire in 1677. He appears in Besse’s Sufferings as a persecutor of Friends in Notts.

D.N.B.; Cropper, Sufferings, 1892, quoting Brown’s Worthies of Nottinghamshire.

[3] John Throsby (1740-1803) republished Thoroton’s Nottinghamshire, with additions, in 1790. He wrote also on Leicestershire.

[4] See Original Records of Early Nonconformity under Persecution and Indulgence, compiled by G. Lyon Turner, 1911, iii. 13. See other references to E. Hooton, i. 155, ii. 725, iii. 744. Chapman was Vicar of Mansfield Woodhouse.

[5] MS. in D. This piece is endorsed: “Oliver Huttons Certificate Concerning G: ﬀ:”; and is among other similar certificates which were read at the Second Day’s Meeting, 16 xii. 1686/7. “Oliver Hutton’s hystry” does not appear to have survived. See Braithwaite, Beginnings of Quakerism, 1912, pp. 43, 44.

[6] MS. in D. entitled: “A Testimony Concerning our Dear ﬀriend and Sister in yᵉ Lord Elizabeth Hutton,” dated 1690, but not in Fox’s writing.

[7] For an illustrated article on Elizabeth Heath (d. 1693) and her charity see Journal F.H.S. x.

[8] MS. in D. endorsed by Fox: “a short jornall of gﬀ never wer printd,” and by another writer: “of Some Short things from abᵗ yᵉ year 1648 to King Charles yᵉ 2ᵈ Dayes.” The MS. is much worn at the edges, but some words have been inserted from a contemporary copy.

[9] Besse, Sufferings of the Quakers, 1753, i. 137.

[10] D. (Swarth. MSS. ii. 43)

[11] The home of Thomas Aldam (c. 1616-1660) was Warmsworth, near Doncaster. His detention in York Castle followed a contretemps with the clergyman of this village, Thomas Rookby; he was two and a half years in the Castle. Short Testimony by his son, Thomas, 1690; Piety Promoted; D.N.B.; Camb. Jnl.

[12] D. (Swarth. MSS. i. 373)

[13] Mary Fisher (c. 1623-1698), afterwards Bayly and Cross, became a prominent preacher and traveller. She visited Cambridge and preached to the students, travelled in the West Indies and Eastern Europe, and died in Charlestown, South Carolina. Camb. Jnl.; Quaker Women, 1915.

[14] D. (Swarth. MSS. iii. 36)

[15] According to a MS. in D. (Swarth. MSS. iii. 91), William Peares died in York Castle. Fox endorses this scrap of paper: “W peres died in presen at York abought 1654.” In the MS. we read: “The cause of his Jmprisonment was, because he was moued to stripe himselfe naked. A ﬀigure off all the nakedness of the world.... Jt was the naked that suffered for the naked truth.”

In A Declaration of present Sufferings, printed 1659, recounting six years of persecution, we have a confirmation of G. F.’s statement: under Yorkshire, “William Peers imprisoned till death for Tithes.” (p. 20.)

[16] Prior to her incarceration in York Castle, Jane Holmes was one of the Friends whose preaching made such an impression on the town of Malton that “some was caused to burne a great deale of riboning of silkes and braueries and such things” (D. Swarth. MSS. i. 373). While in the Castle her health suffered, and this may partly account for the low spiritual condition into which she fell. The MSS. tell us that the “wilde nature was exalted in her, aboue the seede of god” and “the wilde Eyrie spirit was exalted aboue the Crosse” (Swarth. MSS. iii. 40), resulting in her “going out” from her quondam friends into darkness and obscurity. See Braithwaite, Beginnings of Quakerism, 1912, pp. 72, 73.

[17] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 35a)

[18] Amor Stoddard (d. 1670), frequently styled Captain, was one of Fox’s companions on various missionary journeys. He lived in London. His wife died in 1665.

Beck and Ball, London Friends’ Meeting, 1869; Camb. Jnl.

[19] James Halliday was a weaver of Allartown, in Northumberland. He travelled frequently with Patrick Livingstone. The date of his detention in York is not found.

[20] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 15) endorsed: “El: Hooton to yᵉ Bench, to set James Holydah free & to call others to yᵉ Bar & set yᵐ at liberty.”

[21] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 3) Although this letter is signed “Elizabeth Hooton,” there are evidences that it is in the handwriting of Thomas Aldam, so it is possible that it may have been partly composed or edited by him.

[22] As with William Peares, so with Benjamin Nicholson, the rigours of York Castle, though unable to reduce the spirit, proved too strong for the enfeebled body. Benjamin Nicholson died there in 1660. His home was Tickhill near Doncaster.

[23] Two copies are in D. An interesting and curious production, and badly printed. On page 3 we read: “You do not read in all the Holy Scriptures, that any of the Holy men of God were Cambridge or Oxford Scollers, or Universitie men, or called Masters; but (on the contrary), they were plain men, and laboured with their hands, and taught freely, as they had received it freely from the Lord.”

[24] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 5)

[25] See photo reproduction of this letter. Fox has endorsed it: 1655, but we think 1653 must be the date; the Author’s unit figure is not very clear.

[26] Margaret Killam was wife of John Killam, of Balby, Yorks. She was a great traveller and sufferer for the Truth.

[27] D. Swarth. MSS. i. 2. Margaret Killam, writing to George Fox, in 1654, mentions holding a meeting at “Oliuer Hoottens,” also one at “Thomas Brockshows att Mansfild side,” and continues: “And soe as the lord directs to send ouer sum̄ frends it may bee of greate seruice there abouts; and to Mansfild side, for there is much deadnes ther awaies” (Swarth. MSS. i. 374). There is mention of another meeting at Oliver Hooton’s, at Skegby, in 1653 (D. Swarthmore MSS. iii. 52).

[28] Journal of George Fox, bi-cent. ed. i. 197.

[29] This MS. is the property of Broughton, Gainsborough and Spalding Monthly Meeting. See F.P.T. 152.

[30] John Whitehead (1630-1696) was a Yorkshireman in early life and afterwards resided at Fiskerton, near Lincoln. See Camb. Jnl.

[31] Suff. i. 346.

[32] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 37)

[33] Journal, bi-cent. ed. i. 198.

[34] F.P.T. 219.

[35] It must be remembered that according to the Old Style, the year began with March, which the Quakers designated First Month. Hence Fourth Month was June.

[36] Suff. i. 553.

[37] Callender, Historical Discourse, Boston, 1739. Both these quotations are taken from The Quakers in the American Colonies, by Rufus M. Jones, London, 1911, p. xxi.

[38] Quakers in American Colonies, p. 8.

[39] Mary Dyer (????-1660) was the wife of William Dyer, then of Newport, Rhode Island. She was described by George Bishop as “A Comely Grave Woman, and of a goodly Personage, and one of a good Report, having an Husband of an Estate, fearing the Lord, and a Mother of [six] Children” (New England Judged, 1703, p. 157). Her husband and she emigrated from London to Boston in 1635. See Rogers, Mary Dyer, 1896.

[40] Calamy, Account of the Ejected Ministers, i. 481, calls Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, England, a “little Zoar.” In the chapel known as the Old Meeting House, in Mansfield, which was built in the year 1702, by the descendants of the congregation which had formerly received the Ejected Ministers, there are two commemorative brasses above the altar, placed there by the late Rev. A. W. Worthington, a former minister, which bear the following inscription: “In memory of the conscientious sacrifice and Christianity of the Rev. Robert Porter, Vicar of Pentrich, the Rev. John Whitlock, M.A., Vicar of St. Mary’s, Nottingham, the Rev. William Reynolds, M.A., lecturer at the same church, the Rev. John Billingsley, M.A., Vicar of Chesterfield, Joseph Truman, B.D., Rector of Cromwell, the Rev. Robert Smalley, Vicar of Greasley, and others, who resigned their livings when the Act of Uniformity was passed in 1662.

“Driven from their homes by the Oxford Act, in 1666, they found in Mansfield a little Zoar, a shelter and a sanctuary; and united in hearty love and concord, they worshipped together till the Act of Toleration was passed in 1688, when all who survived the day of persecution returned to their ministry, save the Rev. R. Porter, who remained in charge of this congregation till his death, January 22nd, 1690.”

[41] In 1641, the assembled citizens made the following declaration: “This Body Politick is a Democracie; that is to say, it is in the Power of the Body of Freemen, orderly assembled, or the major part of them, to make Just Lawes by which they will be regulated.” Under the same date the following act was passed: “It is ordered that none bee accounted a delinquent for doctrine,” and later in the same year this was re-affirmed in these words: the “Law of the last Court made concerning Libertie of Conscience in Point of Doctrine be perpetuated.” Quoted from Rhode Island Colony Records, by Jones, op. cit., p. 23.

[42] Calendar of State Papers Colonial.

[43] Katharine Scott, wife of Richard Scott, was the daughter of (Rev.) Francis Marbury, of London, and her mother was of the family of John Dryden, the poet. Her daughter, Mary, married Christopher Holder, and another daughter, Hannah, married Walter Clarke, once Governor of Rhode Island. Her daughter, Patience (1648-????), was specially noted for her early suffering for conscience sake. Rogers, Mary Dyer; Scull, Dorothea Scott, 1882; Holders of Holderness, 1902.

[44] Bishop, New England Judged, 1703, p. 94.

[45] Ibid. p. 95.

[46] Of Anne Austin (d. 1665, in London) little is known. She was advanced in years at the time of her American visit. See Bowden, Hist. i. 30-37, etc.

[47] Upsall endeavoured to supply Quaker prisoners with food, but only succeeded by a weekly payment to the gaoler of five shillings (Bishop, op. cit. p. 8). Bishop tells us that he was “a long-liver in Boston, an Ancient Man, and full of Years.”

[48] Bishop, op. cit. p. 54.

[49] The Southwicks lived at Salem. Other children were Daniel and Provided. Bishop has many notices of the family.

[50] Bishop, op. cit. p. 55.

[51] Bishop, op. cit. p. 60, in the case of Horred Gardner, of Newport.

[52] Nicholas Davis was of Plymouth Colony.

[53] Printed in New England Judged, p. 299.

[54] New England Judged, p. 333.

[55] One of the young and vigorous preachers of early Quakerism (1634-1662). He died in Newgate Jail, London. See Camb. Jnl.

[56] It was spread abroad in N.E. that the Quakers had forged the King’s letter and counterfeited his seal (D. Spence MSS. iii. 116).

[57] The furious attack on the Quaker travellers, Christopher Holder and John Copeland, in 1657, made by the civil and Church authorities of Salem, so affected Samuel Shattuck (c. 1620-1689), a man of good reputation, that he interfered on behalf of the sufferers and as a consequence was imprisoned at Boston, and whipped; and finally, in May, 1659, he was banished the Colony. Some trouble which arose in the early part of 1665 is referred to later (see p. 50), and it may be that Shattuck, as a consequence, dissociated himself from Friends. His remains were buried in the Charter Street Burying Ground in Salem; on the tombstone the date is given in non-Quaker style—“ye sixth day of June.” His intervention on behalf of Christopher Holder is recorded in full. There is a picture of the stone in The Holders of Holderness, 1902. A son of Shattuck appears in one of the Salem witch trials (Witchcraft and Quakerism, 1908, p. 8). His descendants are still living in Salem (Holders, p. 104).

[58] In a letter from John Philly to George Fox, in 1661 (Swarth. MSS. iv. 158), there is this mention of Ralph Goldsmith: “There is one Ralph Goldsmith, A friend & master of A ship, his house is in Jacobs street Nere Sauorys Dock, Nere Redrife, whoe hath taken A viag for Venus [Venice].” Little is known of this Quaker shipmaster. Besse notes one of the name among sufferers in Barbados (Suff. ii. 279).

[59] Captain James Oliver is frequently mentioned in the history of these troublous times. He led forth Robinson and Stevenson to execution, causing drums to beat when they attempted to speak (there is a striking illustration of this scene in McClures Magazine, Nov. 1906, from a painting by Howard Pyle); and when Edward Wharton intervened in the trial of Leddra, Oliver cried out; “Knock him on the pate” (Bishop, op. cit. p. 318).

[60] Bishop, op. cit. p. 345. There is in D. a MS. account of the voyage of the King’s messenger.

[61] Joan Brocksopp (d. 1681) was the wife of Thomas Brocksopp, of Little Normanton, near Chesterfield, Derbyshire.

[62] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 27) This may be the “E. Hootons Manscr” of the margin of Whiting’s Truth and Innocency Defended, 1702, see pp. 95, 109, etc.

[63] Mary G. Swift, of Millbrook, N.Y., who has made considerable study of Hooton printed literature, suggests that Elizabeth Hooton and Jane Brocksopp were the “two Friends,” mentioned in a letter from George Rofe to Richard Hubberthorne (quoted in Bowden’s Hist. i. 230), and that they accompanied him a part of the journey from Va. to N. E. in his “small boat,” and on arrival united with him in appointing the first General Meeting in America, at Newport, R.I., in 1661. He writes: “We appointed a general meeting,” etc., the antecedent to we being the writer and his two Friends. In her own account of this visit to New England (see p. 32), E. Hooton states: “We did come to Rhod Jland where was appointed by freinds a generall meeting for New England.” Bishop tells us of the two women that “the Lord afforded them an opportunity by a Catch, which carried them part of the way” (New England Judged, p. 404). Whiting relates that they “got to Rhode Island, where was a General Meeting” (Truth and Innocency, p. 109). It would be very interesting if it could be stated with certainty that E. Hooton was concerned in the calling of the first Y.M. in America. See p. 32, n. 2.

[64] Margin gives the name—Wenlock Christison.

[65] This may have been the first General Meeting in America. See p. 31, n. 1, and the account of the 250th Anniversary of the Beginning of New England Yearly Meeting, 1911.

[66] Margaret Fell (1614-1702) was the wife and widow of Judge Thomas Fell (1598-1658). In 1669 she married George Fox (1624-1691). She was the nursing mother of the early Quaker Church.

[67] Swarth. MSS. i. 75.

[68] Ann Clayton held some position of trust in the Swarthmoor household, but she also travelled in the ministry at home and abroad. It was she, or another of the same name, who became the wife of Nicholas Easton of R.I., prior to 1672. See Camb. Jnl.

[69] Swarth. MSS. i. 76.

[70] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 27), close of first portion.

[71] At the end of her Invitation of Love.

[72] In the voluminous records of the cost of many religious journeys taken by the early Friends, there is no record of any money paid to Elizabeth Hooton. It may be that she met the cost of these extensive travels out of her own pocket. Bowden states that “she was in very sufficient circumstances” (Hist. i. 256).

[73] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 34).

[74] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 10).

[75] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 27), second portion.

[76] Seaborne Cotton was a son of John Cotton (1584-1652), the noted Puritan minister, of Boston. His wife was a daughter of Simon Bradstreet, sometime Governor of Massachusetts Colony. Cotton was minister of Hampton, and as such came into frequent conflict with Quakerism.

[77] The words within parentheses were added to the MS. by another hand.

[78] This was Eliakim Wardell, mentioned two lines below. His home was at Hampton. He was one of those who suffered for entertaining the Quaker travellers. His wife, Lydia, “being a young and tender and chaste Woman ... as a Sign to them, went in naked among them,” on which action Bishop comments: “This might be permitted as a stumbling-block, rather for their Hardening than Conversion, after they had rejected better Examples and Warnings” (New England Judged, p. 376).

[79] John Hussey and Rebecca his wife, née Perkins, lived near the Wardells at Hampton.

[80] Captain William Hathorne was a Salem magistrate. His descendant, Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author (1804-1864), writes of him: “He was a bitter persecutor, as witness the Quakers, who have remembered him in their histories” (The Custom House, quoted in Jnl. F.H.S. xii). See Bishop, op. cit.; Felt, Annals of Salem, 1842.

[81] Benanuel Bower, of Cambridge, Mass., was originally a Baptist, but later his family and he became Friends. A correspondent quoted in Friends’ Intelligencer, 1887, p. 243 (copied into The Friend (Phila.) for the same year), writes: “Thomas Danforth, who was the county treasurer and magistrate, whenever short of business, was in the habit of persecuting B. Bowers, and then he would enter it at full length upon the records” in the Court House in Cambridge.

[82] The correspondent referred to in the previous note copied the wording of the warrant as found in the public records of the Cambridge Court House, and it appears in the periodicals named in note [81]. He writes further: “There is this much to be said in the favor of the old Puritans, that they did not treat the Quakers any worse than they did their own members whom they accused of heresy, and in most cases they gave the victim the choice of paying a fine or taking a whipping. I found one case in which they gave a man a second whipping because he invited his friends to come and see him whipped the first time.”

[83] This phrase—“a Cage of uncleane birds”—quoted originally from the Bible—“Babylon is become ... a cage of every unclean and hateful bird,” Rev. xviii. 2, was frequently used by early Friends to describe their opponents. Francis Bugg (apostate Quaker) states that George Fox used it “about the year 1662” in reference to “the Church of England” (Pilgrim’s Progress from Quakerism to Christianity, 1698, p. 130).

[84] This is doubtless a reference to an early, undated quarto pamphlet, issued by Friends, entitled Something concerning Agbarus, Prince of the Edesseans.... Also Paul’s Epistle to the Laodiceans.... As also how several scriptures are corrupted by the Translators. Other editions, in octavo, were printed later in the century.

[85] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 59)

[86] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 43)

[87] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 62) The following is taken from the Calendar of State Papers Colonial, 1665, i. 292:

April 10, 1665.

From Captain Breedon’s House at Boston.

Col. George Cartwright to Col. Nicholls:

“This day, a Quaker (my country-woman) told me before Captain Breedon, that she had heard several say yᵗ I was a Papist ... and that Sir Robᵗ. Carr kept a naughty woman; I examined her if I had not kept one too, or if she knew me not to be a Papist.” E. Hooton writes: “They said that Cartwright, that was one of the Comissionʳˢ, was a papist, or a Jesuit, but hee being my Country man, J did vindicate him, and told them that J knew noe such thinge” (MS. in D. Portfolio iii. 43).

[88] Ann Richardson was, by her first marriage, Ann Burden. After some years of married life in Mass., Thomas and Ann Burden returned to England, their native land, and settled at Bristol, where the husband died. His widow crossed the Atlantic again about 1657, and, with Mary Dyer, visited Mass., whence they were both banished. About 1665, as Ann Richardson, she again visited New England.

[89] Swarth. MSS. iii. 104.

[90] Swarth. MSS. iii. 101. Fox adds to the endorsement: “shee died in the trouth.”

[91] Jane Nicholson (d. 1712) was the wife of Joseph Nicholson, of Bootle, Lancs. They visited the New World in 1659, and again, for several years, they were in New England. See Camb. Jnl.; Household Account Book of Sarah Fell of Swarthmoor Hall, 1915.

[92] John Endicott (c. 1588-1665), first Governor of New England, will go down to the end of time as the arch-opponent of New England Quakerism. See Annals of Salem, 1845, where there is a portrait; Chronicle of the Pilgrim Fathers; Jnl. F.H.S. xii.; etc.

[93] Hist. i. 259.

[94] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 36)

[95] Hist. under date 1662.

[96] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii, 63)

[97] The Nottingham and Mansfield Quarterly Meeting was long held at the house of Timothy Garland. Letters for Friends were at times addressed: “To be left at Timothy Garlands at the Green Dragon in Mansfeild.” (Locker-Lampson, A Quaker Post-bag, 1910, pp. 48, 51. See also The Journal, iv., v.)

[98] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 81) The difficulties and delays of travel on land and sea at this period are illustrated by another letter of Samuel Hooton, dated 4th of June, 1666, in which he tells us that the ship on which he sailed—“the royall exchang”—was “staying in the harbar at the Kows for the wind, how long i may staye I know not.” MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 82)

[99] Richard Bellingham (1592?-1672) was Deputy-Governor of Massachusetts from 1635, and Governor from 1665 to his death.

[100] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 80). The Journal appears in full in The Friend (Phila.), lxxvii. (1904), 204.

[101] Patrick Livingstone (????-1694) was born at Angus in Scotland, and was convinced in the North of England in 1658. He travelled in the ministry with James Halliday (F.P.T. 201). In later years he lived in Nottingham and London. See Jnl. F.H.S. vii. 184.

[102] Given in his Truth Owned, 1667, pp. 6ﬀ.

[103] Justice Matthew Babington lived at Rotherby, Leics. He was an ancestor of Lord Macaulay. Mary Radley states that he was the “Some Justice” addressed by E. Hooton (D. Portfolio iii. 6). He appears in Besse’s book of Sufferings as a persecutor (i. 335).

[104] See Jnl. F.H.S. v. 140.

[105] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 33), dated “13ᵗʰ day of 6ᵗʰ Month 1667,” and endorsed: “El. Hooton to some Spirits who were gone out from yᵉ trueth.” At the close of the paper occur the names: “Eliza: Barnes & Rose Atkinson” (see Camb. Jnl.).

[106] Lodowicke Muggleton (1609-1697/8) and John Reeve (1608-1658) announced themselves the “two witnesses” of Rev. xi. 3. The sect of the Muggletonians was never very numerous, but it still exists, sharing with the Quakers the distinction of being the only survivals of those numerous religious bodies which sprang into existence during Commonwealth times.

[107] A Volume of Spiritual Epistles written by John Reeve and Lodowicke Muggleton, printed 1755, reprinted 1820, p. 227.

[108] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 67) This is printed at the end of addresses to the King, and to the King and both Houses of Parliament, by Thomas Taylor. The first is dated 1st of December, 1670.

[109] The Conventicle Act of 1664. For particulars of its working see F.P.T. 357.

[110] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 53)

[111] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 52)

[112] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 69)

[113] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 73)

[114] Edward Montagu, second Earl of Manchester (1602-1671), was Lord Chamberlain at this time, having been appointed in 1660 (D.N.B.).

[115] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii, 11) It is endorsed: “To yᵉ Lᵈ Chamberlane for Release of Prisonᵉʳˢ & justice to her selfe.”

[116] Henry Grey (1599?-1673), created Earl of Stamford in 1628. (D.N.B.) He was a Leicestershire nobleman. His son, John Grey, is mentioned later.

[117] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 47)

[118] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 17), endorsed: “To yᵉ Duke of York desiring an Answer to her former papers, & pressing for justice to her selfe.”

[119] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 44)

[120] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 57)

[121] William Dewsbury (1621-1688), Thomas Goodaire (????-1693), and Henry Jackson (????-1727), were prominent Friends of the early day. Dewsbury spent nigh twenty years of his life within prison walls.

Francis Howgill (1618-1668/9) was of Westmorland. He died in Appleby Jail. Thomas Taylor (c. 1617-1681/2), a Yorkshireman, spent long years in prison for conscience sake.

[122] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 56)

[123] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 55)

[124] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 60)

[125] The copy of this record is amongst the late Mary Radley’s notes, but the authority is not stated. The names of witnesses correspond with those given on the certificate obtained from Somerset House.

[126] It will be noticed that this letter is dated a month after the marriage had taken place. Possibly Elizabeth Hooton was travelling when the intention of marriage came before the Meeting, and it was thought well to record her letter of approval when it was obtained.

[127] See Turner, Original Records, 1911, i. 76, ii. 771, iii. 745.

[128] MSS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 1, 29)

[129] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 75), endorsed: “El. Hooton To yᵉ King & Councell on behalf of yᵉ innocent & Judge Fells Widdow.” Further mention of this dispute may be found in Maria Webb’s Fells of Swarthmoor Hall, 1865, pp. 255 ff. See also Jnl. F.H.S. xi. 181.

[130] Hannah Salter, as Hannah Stringer, the wife of John Stringer, of London, participated in the troubles associated with James Nayler in 1656, but repented thereof, and returned to the Quaker fold. In 1666 she married Henry Salter, of London.

[131] Swarth. MSS. i. 152, addressed: “Leaue this with Sarah ﬀell at Swarthmore ﬀor to be sent to her mother In Lancashire.” Endorsed by Fox.

[132] The Arraignment of Popery; being a short Collection, taken out of the Chronicles, and other Books, of the State of the Church in the Primitive Times; also the State of the Papists ... by George Fox and Ellis Hookes, 1667, a learned treatise of 140 pages.

[133] Extracts from State Papers, 1913, p. 341.

[134] The Journal of George Fox, bi-cent. ed. ii. 140. The other woman friend was Hannah Salter; see note to this name in Fox’s Journal, Camb. ed.

[135] Martha Fisher (c. 1631-1687) was a member of the valuable band of London women Friends active in work for the cause of Truth.

[136] Swarth. MSS. i. 83. The letter is addressed: “ﬀor Sarah ﬀell this at Swarthmore To be left wᵗʰ Thomas Green grocer in Lancaster,” and endorsed by Fox: “j rous to mﬀ 1671 of patin of releas.”

[137] Henry Bennet, first Earl of Arlington (1618-1685), was Secretary of State 1662-1674, and Lord Chamberlain 1674 (D.N.B.).

[138] Sir Joseph Williamson (1633-1701) was Clerk of the Council 1672, and afterwards, 1674, Secretary of State to Charles II. (D.N.B.)

[139] Of the previous life of Elizabeth Miers we are yet in ignorance. Apparently she did not proceed further than Barbados, and returned home about 1672 (see Webb, Fells, p. 278).

[140] The account of the voyage is given in detail in the Journal of George Fox, Camb. ed.

[141] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 25) The copyist of this address endorses it: “El. Hooton to yᵉ Rulers (J suppose) of Barbado’s.”

[142] MS. in D. (Portfolio iii. 32)

[143] James Lancaster (????-1699) was of Walney Island, Lancashire. He was one of Fox’s fellow-travellers to the Western World.

[144] MS. in D. The endorsement is in three hands—Fox writes: “a testemony of elesebeth hoton,” another adds: “before she dyed,” and a third: “by Ja: Lancaster.”

[145] Journal, Camb. ed. ii. 213.

[146] MS. in D. Not autograph.

[147] My Birthday, 1871.

[148] Joseph Oxley, Journal, under date 1771.

[149] Bishop, op. cit. p. 420.

[150] Besse, Suff. i. 553.

[151] Ibid. i. 333, 334.

[152] Camb. Jnl. ii, 15.

[153] Muggleton, Spiritual Epistles, pp. 78, 227.

[154] Suff. i. 555.

[155] This may be the same as Oliver 3, see page 84.

[156] T. Salthouse to M. Fell (Swarth. MSS. i. 103), and Letters of Early Friends, p. 165.

[157] Besse, Suff. ii. 290.

[158] Relation of ... Alice Curwen, 1680.

[159] Besse, Suff. ii. 313.

[160] A.R.B. MSS. 45.

[161] Besse, ii, 339.

Writings by Elizabeth Hooton

I.—In print:—

II.—In manuscript:—

This is a collection of seventy-nine MSS., one only, or at most two, in the handwriting of the Author, but all of contemporary date. They are, in the main, addresses to persons in authority or position—Cromwell, the Mayor of London, the Lord Chamberlain, the Bishops of London and Canterbury, the King and the Duke of York, Lieutenant Robinson of the Tower, various “priests” and magistrates, and others.

There is another MS. in D. (Portfolio i. 135), being an address respecting persecution in New England, unsigned, but doubtless by E. Hooton, though not in her handwriting.

References to Elizabeth Hooton

I.—In print:—

II.—In manuscript:—

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Skegby Village prior to 1897	Frontispiece.
Photograph by the Sherwood Photographic Co., Mansfield.
The tall house on the extreme left of the picture is standing to-day. It was the property of the Society of Friends until 1800, when it was sold, with the adjoining Burial Ground, now a garden, the proceeds going towards the re-building of the Meeting House at Mansfield. The house is considered by some to have been the home of Elizabeth Hooton. It is probably of seventeenth century construction.
Letter from Elizabeth Hooton to George Fox, 1653 [?]	12
Photograph by Henry G. Summerhayes.
This is probably an autograph letter. It is endorsed by Fox: “e houton to gﬀ 1655.”
Beckingham Church	14
Photograph by Rachel L. Manners.
The village of Beckingham is about five miles south of Newark-on-Trent. The church has a fine Norman porch and the churchyard is remarkable, being the shape of a coffin.
Heading of the Tract “False Teachers,” etc.	17
Photograph by Humphrey L. Penney from the original. See p. 11.
Signature of John Endicott	34
Photograph by Walter J. Hutchins from a facsimile in Annals of Salem.[vii]
Endorsement by George Fox	52
Photograph by W. J. Hutchins from an early copy of a letter from Elizabeth Hooton to Oliver Cromwell. See p. 10.
A Portion of a Page of the Earliest Minute Book of Nottinghamshire Quarterly Meeting	75
Photograph by Sherwood Photographic Co., Mansfield, from the original. See p. 81.
Lincoln Castle Gateway	78
Original drawing by Ethel Barringer.
This, with some fragments of the old wall, and a small, strongly-built structure, supposed to have been a dungeon and known as Cobb’s Hall, is all that remains of the old Castle. The area of the fortress is now occupied by the County Hall and a building now disused, which was the County Gaol.

ELIZABETH HOOTON

Preface

Contents

Illustrations

Key to Abbreviations

CHAPTER I
Early Service in England

CHAPTER II
First Visit to New England

CHAPTER III
Second Visit to New England

CHAPTER IV
Closing Years

Addenda

THE HUSBAND OF ELIZABETH HOOTON (pp. 2, 16)

NOAH BULLOCK (p. 7)

COMMITMENT TO LINCOLN CASTLE (p. 14)

UNKETTY (page 43)

A YOUNG MAN OUT OF THE NORTH OF ENGLAND (p. 43)

HOOTON DESCENDANTS

Samuel Hooton

Elizabeth Hooton, Jr., Afterwards Lambert.

Oliver Hooton

Martha Hooton

Thomas Hooton

John Hooton

Josiah Hooton

JUDGE ENDICOTT (p. 50)

FOOTNOTES

Bibliography

Writings by Elizabeth Hooton

I.—In print:—

II.—In manuscript:—

References to Elizabeth Hooton

I.—In print:—

II.—In manuscript:—

Index

CHAPTER		PAGE
I.—	Early Service in England	1
II.—	First Visit to New England	18
III.—	Second Visit to New England	35
IV.—	Closing Years	53
	Addenda:
	The Husband of Elizabeth Hooton	77
	Noah Bullock	78
	Commitment to Lincoln Castle	78
	Unketty	79
	A Young Man out of the North of England	79
	Hooton Descendants:
	Samuel Hooton	80
	Elizabeth Hooton, Jr.	82
	Oliver Hooton	83
	Martha Hooton	84
	Thomas Hooton	84
	John Hooton	85
	Josiah Hooton	86
	Judge Endicott	86
	Bibliography	87
	Index	91

ELIZABETH HOOTON

Preface

Contents

Illustrations

Key to Abbreviations

CHAPTER I Early Service in England

CHAPTER II First Visit to New England

CHAPTER III Second Visit to New England

CHAPTER IV Closing Years

Addenda

THE HUSBAND OF ELIZABETH HOOTON (pp. 2, 16)

NOAH BULLOCK (p. 7)

COMMITMENT TO LINCOLN CASTLE (p. 14)

UNKETTY (page 43)

A YOUNG MAN OUT OF THE NORTH OF ENGLAND (p. 43)

HOOTON DESCENDANTS

Samuel Hooton

Elizabeth Hooton, Jr., Afterwards Lambert.

Oliver Hooton

Martha Hooton

Thomas Hooton

John Hooton

Josiah Hooton

JUDGE ENDICOTT (p. 50)

FOOTNOTES

Bibliography

Writings by Elizabeth Hooton

I.—In print:—

II.—In manuscript:—

References to Elizabeth Hooton

I.—In print:—

II.—In manuscript:—

Index

CHAPTER I
Early Service in England

CHAPTER II
First Visit to New England

CHAPTER III
Second Visit to New England

CHAPTER IV
Closing Years