Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/776

766 few days later, some members procured four Quakers admittance to plead at the bar of the House against the proposed bill to "compel certain persons called Quakers to take lawful oaths." By the vote of the House they were called in; "and after some little debate at the door by some of the members about our hats," says Burrough, "the sergeant came and told us we might come in with our hats on or off, which we would. So into the House we were conducted by him, with our hats on; and within the House near the bar he took them off." The hat had, in fact, become the war-standard of this quaint army of non-fighters, and its victorious maintenance is chronicled always with a kind of gleeful and quiet humour by the Quaker autobiographers.

In the seventeenth century it seems to have been as usual for men to keep the hat on in some assemblies which were not religious as it is now for women to wear their hats or bonnets at all public assemblies. In the account of the meeting of the English "Academy, or Royal Society," in the "Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo," in the year 1669, it is implied that the fathers of scientific congresses conducted their business with their hats on. "They observe the ceremony of speaking to the president uncovered, waiting from him permission to be covered." The refusal of hat-honour by the Quakers was at first a chance testimony against supposed worldly and unreal courtesy; but in time the negative refusal to take off the hat was fossilized into a kind of positive ritualistic symbol; it became the duty of a Friend of God to keep his hat on. When William Penn, a man of utterly different spirit from George Fox, was at the court of the religious Princess Elizabeth at Herford, in 1677, he argued against hat-honour in the language of his spiritual master. "The hat choketh" (he said to "a certain graef or earl") "because it telleth tales. It telleth what people are; it marketh men for separatists; it is a blowing a trumpet, and visibly crossing the world; and this, the fear of man cannot abide." But, when he was closeted with his own sovereign, he spoke of the Quaker's hat in a more courtierly and less pretentious tone. The king asked Penn to give him his own explanation of the difference between their religions, Roman Catholicism and Quakerism. The Quaker answered by pointing out the symbolical difference between the hats worn by the king and by himself. "My hat," said he, "is plain. Thine is adorned with ribbons and feathers. The only difference between our religions lies in the ornaments which have been added to thine." No Quaker of the Commonwealth period could have brought himself to give utterance to such a mild definition of Popery. The Quaker's peculiar hat, after lingering long as an exterior sign of the religion of the wearer, has now nearly wholly disappeared. Whether the refusal of hat-honour is disappearing with the broad-brimmed symbol, we do not know, but we believe that there are some "Friends" who remove their hats to ladies, and we know that there are some who take them off when they visit a church.

We must not omit to mention that the fiercest controversy within the Quaker sect itself in Fox's time was also connected with the hat. The once famous John Perrot determined to out-Quaker Quakerism, and to develop it along those lines which Fox had pleased to cut short. Fox often speaks bitterly of this schismatic and of "those that run out from truth with him." Perrot naturally asked why, if it were no true honour to neighbours and magistrates to remove the hat to them, it can be true honour to God to remove the hat to Him?—which Fox and his disciples invariably did in prayer. God, said Perrot, does not demand hat-honour but heart-honour. He spoke too late, however. At the close of the seventeenth century there was no longer sufficient raw material in England for the formation of new sects; the amazing religious productiveness of the nation had come to an end. The general Quaker body remained content with the casuistic arguments provided by their leader for the retention of the inherited habit of uncovering the head in worship. Fox's latest declaration on the subject of the hat was made at Harlingen, in Friesland, in 1677. We quote it for the proverb which he cites: — "The very Turks," says he, "mock at the Christians in their proverb, saying, 'The Christians spend much of their time in putting off their hats, and showing their bare heads to one another.' Now is not the Turk's proverb a reproach to the Christians, and have not you (the burgomaster and council of Harlingen) fined and imprisoned many because they would not put off their hats to you, and show you their bare head?"