Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/124

 His cousin Bradford, with another puritan youth, would have initiated him into the practice of drinking healths. He paid his shot, but left the company; spent a night in religious exercises, and felt a divine call to forsake all his existing associations. This call he obeyed on 9 Sept. 1643. Turning his face southward, he disappeared for nine months, dividing his time between Lutterworth, Northampton, and Newport Pagnel, shunning society and declining religious fellowship. In June 1644 he moved on to Barnet; here he doubted whether he had done right in leaving home, and his religious melancholy deepened towards despair. After a stay at Barnet, he took a lodging in London, and visited his uncle Pickering, a baptist. Hearing that his relatives were troubled at his absence, he at length returned to Drayton.

From that return he dates (Epistles, p. 2) the beginning of his religious community (1644). This, however, is a retrospective judgment. His course was still far from clear. His relatives wished him to marry. Others proposed his joining the ‘auxiliary band’ among the parliamentary forces; this he refused, being ‘tender,’ a word which in his phraseology means religiously affected. He was attracted to Coventry, a puritan stronghold, and found sympathisers there. Returning to Drayton in 1645, he spent something like a year in fruitless resorts to neighbouring clergy. The curate of Drayton, Nathaniel Stephens (rector from 1659), a studious and kindly man, paid much attention to him, but Fox disliked his bringing the subjects of their conversations into the pulpit. He describes Stephens as subsequently his ‘great persecutor,’ an unwarranted expression. The old vicar of Mancetter, Richard Abell, advised him to ‘take tobacco, and sing psalms.’ John Machin, afterwards lecturer at Atherstone, prescribed physic and bleeding; the bleeding was tried without success. He got more satisfaction from his visits of charity among the poor; he had some independent means, whence derived he does not say; he reports without comment the remark of his relatives, ‘When hee went from us hee had a greate deale of gould and sillver about him’ (original manuscript of Journal, p. 17).

During a Sunday morning's walk, early in 1646, the new idea presented itself to him that a minister must be more than a scholar. Henceforward he gave up attendance at church; going rather to the orchard or the fields, with his Bible. For more than a year he wandered about in the midland counties, mixing with separatists of all sorts, but ‘never joined in profession of religion with any.’ The rumour of a ‘fasting woman’ drew him to Lancashire, but his curiosity was soon satisfied. On his way back he visited Dukinfield, a Cheshire village, where, according to Edwards (Gangræna, iii. 164), the earliest independent church in England was organised. Among its members, who had lately (1646) been troubled by a supernatural drum, Fox in 1647 ‘declared truth.’ Sewel marks this as ‘the first beginning of George Fox's preaching.’ It was continued at Manchester, and consisted of ‘few, but powerful and piercing words.’ A conference of baptists and others at Broughton, Leicestershire (probably Broughton-Astley), gave him an opportunity of addressing a large concourse of people. From this time he was much sought after; ‘one Brown’ prophesied great things of him; and when Brown died, Fox lay in a trance, which was a fourteen days' wonder. He attended the religious meetings and discussions which then abounded, usually taking some part. The first mention of his speaking in a ‘steeple-house’ is at a great disputation in Leicester (1648), when ‘presbyterians, independents, baptists, and common-prayer-men’ all took part; the debate came to an abrupt conclusion, but was resumed at an inn. In the same year he first mentions ‘a meeting of Friends,’ at Little Eaton, near Derby.

At this period the mysticism of Fox was not confined to matters of spiritual insight. He claimed to have received direct knowledge of the occult qualities of nature, so that he was ‘at a stand’ in his mind, whether he should ‘practise physick for the good of mankind.’ In this respect, as in some others, he reminds us of Jacob Boehme, whose writings, a contemporary affirms, were ‘the chief books’ bought by Fox's followers (, Looking Glass for G. Fox, 2nd ed. 1756, p. 10). But this phase passed away, and he devoted himself to a spiritual reform. Fox's idealism was not that of the visionary; his mind was strongly set on realities. It was a sore trial to him to reach by degrees the conclusion that the religious disputes of his day, even that between protestant and papist, turned upon trivial matters. With much modesty of conviction, but a daring thoroughness of sincerity, he strove to get at the core of things. Unconventional ways, which he now adopted, his retention of the hat, and disuse of complimentary phrases, were dictated by a manly simplicity. Too much has been made of his peculiarities of dress. He rejected ornaments. His ‘leathern breeches’ are first mentioned by him in his journal under date 1651. Croese makes his whole dress of leather, and Sewel appears to cor-