A Book of Quaker Saints. L. V. Hodgkin
the black letters of the family motto, can still be read on a marble scroll. If George in his boyhood ever asked his mother what the French words meant, Mary Fox, who was, we are told, 'accomplished above her degree in the place where she lived,' may have been able to tell him that they mean, in English, 'Pure faith is my Joy'; or that, keeping the rhyme, they might be translated as follows:—
'MY FAITH PURE, MY JOY SURE.'
Then remembering what had happened in her own family, surely she would add, 'And I, who come of martyr stock, know that that is true. Even if you have to suffer for it, my son, even if you have to die for it, keep your Faith pure, and your Joy will be sure in the end.'
Then Righteous Christer would take the little lad up on his shoulder and show him the broken spear above the tomb, the crest of the Purefoys, and tell him its story. Hundreds of years before, one of the Squires of this family had defended his liege lord on the battle-field at the risk of his own life, and even after his weapon, a spear, had been broken in his hand. His lord, out of gratitude for this, had given his faithful follower, not only the right to wear the broken spear in token of his valour ever after as a crest, but also by his name and by his motto to proclaim to all men the PURE FAITH (PUREFOY) that had given him this sure and lasting joy. Ever since, for hundreds of years, the Purefoy family had handed down, by their name, by their motto, and by the broken spear on their crest, this noble tradition of loyalty and allegiance—enshrined like a shining jewel in the centre of the muddy village of Drayton-in-the-Clay.
This was not the only battle story the boy must have known well. A few miles from Fenny Drayton is 'the rising ground of Market Bosworth,' better known as Bosworth Field. As he grew older George loved to wander over the fields that surrounded his birthplace. He 'must have often passed the site of Henry's camp, perhaps may have drunk sometimes at the well at which Richard is said to have quenched his thirst.' But although his home was near this old battlefield, the boy grew up in a peaceful England. Probably no one in Fenny Drayton imagined that in a very few years the smiling English meadows would once more be drenched in blood. George Fox in his country home was brought up to follow country pursuits, and was especially skilful in the management of sheep. He says in his Journal: 'As I grew up, my relations thought to have made me a priest, but others persuaded to the contrary. Whereupon I was put to a man who was a shoemaker by trade, and dealt in wool. He also used grazing and sold cattle; and a great deal went through my hands. While I was with him he was blest, but after I left him, he broke and came to nothing. I never wronged man or woman in all that time. … While I was in that service, I used in my dealings the word "Verily," and it was a common saying among those that knew me, "if George says Verily, there is no altering him." When boys and rude persons would laugh at me, I let them alone, but people generally had a love to me for my innocence and honesty.
'When I came towards 19 years of age, being upon business at a Fair, one of my cousins, whose name was Bradford, a professor, having another professor with him, asked me to drink part of a jug of beer with them. I, being thirsty, went with them, for I loved any that had a sense of good. When we had drunk a glass apiece, they began to drink healths and called for more drink, agreeing together that he that would not drink should pay for all. I was grieved that they should do so, and putting my hand into my pocket took out a groat and laid it on the table before them, saying, "If it be so, I will leave you." So I went away, and when I had done my business I returned home, but did not go to bed that night, nor could I sleep, but sometimes walked up and down and prayed and cried unto the Lord, who said to me: "Thou must forsake all, young and old, keep out of all and be a stranger to all."
'Then at the command of God, the 9th of the 7th month,[1] 1643, I left my relations, and broke off all familiarity or fellowship with young or old.'
The old-fashioned English of the 'Journal' makes this story rather puzzling at the first reading, because several words have changed in meaning since it was written. The name 'professors,' did not then mean learned men who teach or lecture in a University, but any men who 'professed' to be particularly religious and good. These 'professionally religious people' are generally known as 'the Puritans,' and it was meeting with these bad specimens among them who 'professed' a religion they did not attempt to practise, that so dismayed George Fox. Here at any rate 'Pure Faith' was not being kept either to God or men. He must find a more solid foundation on which to rest his own soul's loyalty and allegiance. Over the porch of the Church at Fenny Drayton is painted now, not the Purefoy motto, but the words: 'I will go forth in the strength of the Lord God.' It was from this place that George Fox set forth on the long search for a 'Pure Faith' that, when he found it, was to bring both to him and to many thousands of his countrymen a 'Sure Joy.'
Why Righteous Christer and his wife did not help George more at this time remains a puzzle. They may have been afraid lest he was making a terrible mistake in leaving the worship they knew and followed, or they may have guessed that God was really calling him to do some work for Him bigger than they could understand, and may have felt that they could help their boy best by leaving him free to follow the Voice that spoke to him in the depths of his own heart, even if he had to fight his own battles unaided. Or possibly their thoughts were too full of all the actual battles that were filling the air just then to think any other troubles important. For our Quaker Saints are not legendary people; they are a real part of English History.
All through the years of George's boyhood the struggle between King Charles the First and his Parliament had been getting more tense and embittered. The abolition of the Star Chamber (May 1640), the attempted arrest of the five Members (October 1642), the trial and death, first of Strafford (May 1641) and then of Laud (January 1645)—all these events had been convulsing the great heart of the English nation during the long years while young George had been quietly keeping his master's sheep and cattle in his secluded Leicestershire village.
A year before he left home the long-dreaded Civil War had at last broken out. But the Civil War that broke out in the soul of the young shepherd lad, the struggle between good and evil when he saw his Puritan cousin tempting other people to drink and carouse, was to him a more momentous event than all the outward battles that were raging. His Journal hardly mentions the rival armies of King and Parliament that were marching through the land. Yet in reading of his early struggles in his own spirit, we must always keep in the background of our minds the thought of the great national struggle that was raging at the same time. It was not in the orderly, peaceful, settled England of his earliest years that the boy grew to manhood, but in an England that was being torn asunder by the rival faiths and passions of her sons. Men's minds were filled with the perplexities of great national problems of Church and State, of tyranny and freedom. No wonder that at such a time everyone was too busy to spare much sympathy or many thoughts for the spiritual perplexities of one obscure country lad.
Right into the very middle, then, of this troubled, seething England, George Fox plunged when he left his home at Fenny Drayton. The battle of Marston Moor was fought the following year, July 1644, and Naseby the summer after that. But George was not heeding outward battles. Up and down the country he walked, seeking for help in his spiritual difficulties from all the different kinds of people he came across; and there were a great many different kinds. The England of that day was not only torn by Civil War, it was also split up into innumerable different sects, now that the attempt to force everyone to worship according to one prescribed fashion was at length being abandoned. In one small Yorkshire town it is recorded that there were no less than forty of these sects worshipping in different ways about this time, while new sects were continually arising.
Perhaps it was a generous wish to give the professors another chance and not to judge the whole party from the bad specimens he had met, that made George go back to the Puritans for help. At first they made much of the young enquirer; but, alas! they all had the same defect as those he had met already. Their spoken profession sounded very fine, but they did not carry it out in their lives.
'They sought to be acquainted with me, but I was afraid of them, for I was sensible they did not possess what they professed.' In other words, their faith did not ring true. The professors were certainly not 'Pure as a Bell.'
George Fox's test was always the same, both for his own religion and other people's: 'Is this faith