Page:VCH Buckinghamshire 1.djvu/393

Rh follow out his own particular theories in complete solitude. But besides these less gracious types of Protestantism, there was another of a far more attractive character, which came into existence at this time and represented a really spiritual reaction against the cold formality of both Churchmen and Presbyterians of the period. George Fox and the early Quakers, it will be remembered, were leaders in the first instance of a protest against the rigid Calvinism which, in spite of the teaching of the prayer book and the best Anglican divines, had gained so strange a popularity in England even before the establishment of the Presbyterian system. Thomas Ellwood, in his Autobiography, from which we gain one of the most pleasing pictures of the life of the early Quakers, tells us how he received his first strong impression in their favour at a discussion between his own father and Edward Burrough, a disciple of Fox ; when the latter maintained the offer of universal free grace to all mankind as against the Calvinistic theory of predestination. And it was during the Commonwealth that the Quakers were first persecuted. In so far as they objected also to all outward forms and ceremonies of religion, and believed in no sacraments of any kind, they were also brought into collision with the Church at the Restoration ; though their curious prejudices against taking oaths, and against petitioning for any sort of relief, brought on them (so it must seem to those who do not share their views) much additional and un- necessary suffering.

George Fox was in this county as early as 1644, when his ideas were not yet fully developed ; but by 1655 he had quite a large number of followers in several places, as at Newport Pagnel, Wavendon, High Wycombe, Chalfont St. Peter. Some of their inward inspirations, it must be confessed, led them into actions which would scarcely have passed without censure even in a much more liberal-minded age. At Newport Pagnel in 1655 a woman was imprisoned for interrupting and rebuking the officiant in the middle of divine service ; a man at North Crawley was very roughly handled for addressing the con- gregation on their way out of church ; and Thomas Ellwood relates how a certain Quaker at the end of a sermon, when the people were asked to pray, quietly stood up in his place and said : 'The prayer of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, and the Lord heareth not sinners.' In 1656 another was sued for refusal of tithes and imprisoned about three years at Aylesbury, and others in 1659 were prosecuted for attending a meeting in Wavendon. Many of the Quakers were of the lower classes, but they had a