86

TRAVELLING IN 1672

[CHAP. X

there were very few of their own rank in the community

The country squire in the reign of Charles II. was often a boorish man, whose chief pleasures were derived from field sports and unrefined sensuality. The habit of drinking to excess was general among them, and they rarely mixed among intellectual society. The country gentleman hated foreigners of all sorts, Jews, and Dissenters, but he clung to his traditions and was ever ready to bear arms for his king. Such men would have had no sympathy with the Quaker minister, nor would the Penns have cared to mix in such uncongenial circles.

The rectories of England were also closed against them. The clergy, after the Reformation, were men of little influence, as a whole, they were a plebian class, those of them who were clever or well-born gravitated to the cities, so that the Penns found no friends among them; and when no farmer of their own denomination happened to live on the route they were travelling, they had to resort to the inns.

In the seventeenth century these were excellent. Many an innkeeper must have looked askance at the distinguished young couple, whose sober dress or bearing marked them out as unfamiliar customers, when they alighted from their travelling chaise. And while he admitted to himself that gentlefolk of such manners and

1672]
THE INNS OF ENGLAND

87 appearance must be suitable guests, he must also have wondered whether it was quite prudent on his part to receive them under his roof.

Where locomotion was slow and difficult, inns were apt to be good; the dramatists have immortalised many of them, and the saying, “Shall I not take mine ease at my inn,” had then much meaning."

The brick floors were swept clean, the sheets smelt of lavender, and the home-made bread and home-brewed ale and trout from the stream, with the produce of the farmyard, caused these haltingplaces to be looked upon with favour. The watering-places were already in vogue in England, at least those inland.2

In the seventeenth century, it was not the fashion to go to the sea, but medicinal waters were in great favour. Matlock and Buxton were much frequented, though Bath was ever the queen of watering-places.

Charles II. preferred Tunbridge Wells, and there the court sojourned every year. Troops of profligate women and their cavaliers, walked up

1 King Henry IV., Shakespeare.

2 It is curious, at this present time, when our means of locomotion are undergoing great changes, to note that "fying coaches,” as they were called, were introduced into England at that period. They were extolled as superior to any vehicle ever known. One of these coaches went to Oxford from London in twenty-four hours, and to Exeter in four days, at 2} miles an hour in summer, but less in winter.

They were found, however, to interfere with the interests of many classes. See Chamberlayne's Anglia Metropolis.

88

COURT AT TUNBRIDGE WELLS [CHAP. X and down the Pantiles, seeking for royal favour and royal smiles. There is no mention of the Penns going there, it is unlikely that this gay spot found favour with any members of their solemn community, and only business ever brought the Quaker in proximity to the court.

CHAPTER XI

GEORGE FOX

SECOND to London in importance was Bristol, and thither the Penns repaired that year. It was the first seaport in the western world, and the centre of trade from far and wide. Besides the business that brought him there, William Penn decided to visit his father's grave, so that his wife might stand beside it also, and read upon the sculptured marble the list of the Admiral's services to his country.

One day, when they were walking by the harbour, quite unexpectedly they met George Fox, who had just disembarked from a vessel which had brought him back from America, where he had been on a visit to Maryland. This remarkable man was then forty-nine years of age, having been born in 1624. His father was a weaver at Drayton, in Leicestershire, and as a child he was placed out with a grazier, and spent his juvenile years in tending sheep on the moorlands. There, communing with nature, his mind took a mystic and meditative turn, which influenced his whole after-life. So deeply did he

90

BLASPHEMOUS LETTER

[CHAP. XI

become imbued with religious ideas, that he left his home when a lad, and sought the society of Dissenters, who shared many of his views.

Before he was twenty-three, he was installed as a preacher. He cried out against drunkenness and other vices, and inveighed against the corrupt modes of worship. He asserted that the light of Christ in the heart of man was alone the means of salvation, and that a separate ministry was unnecessary

From enthusiasm he passed to blasphemy.

After announcing, “I am the door and the way,” he wrote a letter to the Protector, who was then in power, in which he stated the following :

“George Fox, who is the Son of God, is sent to stand a witness against the works of darkness.

a My weapons are not carnal, but spiritual, my kingdom is not of this world. I, who am of the world, called George Fox, do deny the carrying of any carnal sword.”

The sect, who at first had gathered round him, did not long entrust the defence of their principles to such a senseless enthusiast as George Fox, who, however, continued to preach till he was imprisoned at Nottingham in 1649."