Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/775

Rh made him lord chief justice of England." The Quakers were incorrigible. They were sent back to prison, but not really so much for the wearing of their hats as for the suspicion that they were royalist emissaries affecting religious singularity in order to win their way amongst the extreme Puritans. Indeed a Major Seely actually gave evidence — false enough — that he had heard George Fox boast that he "could raise forty thousand men at an hour's warning, involve the nation in blood, and so bring in King Charles."

These first public prosecutions for the sake of the hat happened in 1656. In the following year John ap John was put in prison at Tenby for wearing his hat in the church. George Fox went to the mayor, justice, and governor of the prison, and asked them why the Quaker was imprisoned, while the Puritan minister was left in freedom; he had seen the minister "in the steeple-house, with two caps on his head, a black one and a white one, while John ap John had but one." The brims of the "priest's" hat were cut off; the brims of the Quaker's hat were left on "to defend him from the weather." Was the difference in brims cause enough for imprisonment? "These are frivolous things," said the governor. "Why then," replied the patriarch of the Quakers, "dost thou cast my friend into prison for frivolous things?" In the year 1658 many Friends were in trouble in London with Sir Henry Vane, "who, being chairman of committee would not suffer Friends to come in, except they would put off their hats. Now, many of us having been imprisoned upon contempts (as they called them) for not putting off our hats, it was not a likely thing that Friends, who had suffered so long for it from others, should put off their hats for him." Vane, however, did not make so much ado about it as the country justices or the high legal officers had done. After some slight word-conflict, he allowed these quaint irreconcilables to plead before him with covered heads.

George Fox speaks of the restoration of Charles II. as a judgment-day "upon that hypocritical generation of professors, who, being got into power, grew proud, haughty, and cruel beyond others, and persecuted the people of God" (his periphrasis for Quakers) "without pity. O the daily reproaches, revilings, and beatings we underwent amongst them, even in the highways, because we would not put off our hats to them!" The Restoration did not bring about a total cessation of Quaker persecution, but it brought some amelioration of their condition. The easy-going Charles II., always personally tolerant, was much more amused than offended when the Quakers refused to uncover their heads in his presence. Not only upon Fox himself, but upon Hubberthorn, Ellis Hooke, and several others, the king made a very pleasing impression. In December 1660 Charles granted an interview to Thomas Moore, of Hartswood, who had been a justice of peace, in order to receive a petition upon Quaker suffering. There was much debate amongst the courtiers, in the presence of the king, what they should do with this sturdy Quaker's hat. All agreed that he could not be called in with his hat on, and that he would never take it off himself. Some proposed that it might be removed gently by the clerk of the council. The king, the greatest gentleman of them all, declared that the hat should not be taken off at all, unless Thomas himself chose to remove it; no other should take it off. "When I saw the king at the head of the table with the rest of the council," says Moore, "I made a stop, not knowing but that I might give offence; when one of the council spoke to me and said, 'You may go up; it is the king's pleasure that you may come to him with your hat on.'" His whole account of the interview shows that there was not a particle of rudeness or impertinent self-assertion in the sturdy Quaker. Six years later, when Adam Barfoot "came out of Huntingdonshire to warn the king" he met Charles at Whitehall, "betimes in the morning, going ahunting." Adam "stepped to the coachside," says Ellis Hooke, in a letter to Margaret Fell, "and laid his hand upon it, and said, 'King Charles, my message is this day unto thee, in the behalf of God's poor, afflicted, suffering people.'" When he came to the coach-side, the footman took off his hat; "but the king bid him give the man his hat again, and was very mild and moderate." Similar testimonies to the good-natured and gentle manner of Charles II. from men who were the very opposite of courtiers and cavaliers, occur frequently in the autobiographies and letters of the first generation of Quakers.

They were quite as determined to remain covered before Charles's Parliament as before Charles himself. In May 1661, Edward Burrough and two other Quakers were cited before a Parliamentary committee. There were "some obstructions," says Burrough, "about our hats, which at last were taken off by one of them." A