Travellers' Tales of Scotland

The following is from Travellers' Tales of Scotland by R. H. Coats:

V - George Fox

(1657)

IN the year 1657, an ardent English prophet and reformer set out from Westmoreland and turned his horse borderwards, intent on converting Scotland to a more enlightened and reasonable faith. It was a bold and hazardous enterprise for a young man of thirty-three to undertake, but the spirit of earnest missionary zeal which was later to drive George Fox headlong to Holland and the West Indies was already beginning to stir within his bosom, and it was only natural that he should feel that Scotland, which lay closest to hand, and which seemed to him shrouded in a pall of the grossest spiritual darkness, should first be visited by the preachers of the Gospel. Fox tells us that he had for some time felt drivings of the spirit to go to Scotland. It was his eager wish, he informed the Council of Edinburgh, "to visit the seed of God which had long lain in bondage under corruption" in that benighted land. Now, in the year mentioned, the way had been opened up. He had the good fortune to be accompanied in his mission by one Robert Widders, "a thundering man against hypocrisy, deceit, and the rottenness of priests." So, with high hopes, the evangelist set forth.

It cannot be denied that Scotland in those days was in some need of illumination. Fox's Journal abounds in curious and interesting sidelights on the backward state of the country in the seventeenth century. On the very day on which he and his friends entered Edinburgh, "many thousands were gathered together, with abundance of priests among them, about burning a witch." When they came to the town of Johnstons, as Perth was then called, we read that they were fortunate enough to arrive there in the nick of time, "just as they were drawing up the bridges "for the night; and a certain Earl, who wished to see Fox, took care to advise him to make a point of coming early, as "there were three drawbridges to his house, and it would be nine o'clock before the third bridge was drawn." In theological matters a high Calvinism prevailed. It was but twenty years before that Scotland had set its seal to the Solemn League and Covenant. Everywhere the doctrines of John Knox were enthusiastically professed, and the Presbyterian form of discipline rigorously enforced.

One is not surprised, therefore, to find that Fox had no sooner set foot across the border than he was involved in a heated controversy on election and reprobation. Scotsmen dearly love an argument, especially a theological argument, and in their strange visitor from England they found one who was as conversant with the Scriptures, and as eager a disputant, as they were themselves. It was all very well so long as the discussion was confined to Cain, Korah, and Balaam, and the Epistle of St. Jude. A man might be looked on as comparatively harmless who made it his humour persistently to maintain that "thou" and not "you" was the proper mode of speech in addressing individuals, and who openly boasted that he had kept on his hat in the presence of Oliver Cromwell. There would be some sympathy, too, with what he had to say in denouncing the sports and music and frivolities of the day. But when Fox began to maintain that "faith could be without sin," and that "every man had a light within him sufficient to lead him to salvation," Scotsmen had their doubts. And when the Englishman warmed still further to his subject, and went on to declare that the Scottish ministers themselves were no better than thieves and hirelings because they "made the gospel chargeable," and depended on preaching "for their livelihood, these doubts rapidly resolved themselves into certainties that such teaching as this could no longer be tolerated on Scottish soil. A series of propositions was hurriedly drawn up by the indignant ministers the Quaker doctrines were solemnly cursed, one by one, in public worship; and all the people were invited to say Amen.

A curious light is thrown upon the manners of the time by an incident which Fox records of a certain pastor, who "continued preaching against the Friends, and against the light of Christ Jesus, calling it natural. At last one day in his preaching he cursed the light and fell down as dead in his pulpit. The people carried him out, laid him on a grave-stone, and poured strong waters into him, which fetched him to life again; and they carried him home, but he was mopish. After a while he stripped off his cloaths, put on a Scotch plaid, and went into the country amongst the dairy women. When he staid there about two weeks he carne home, and went into the pulpit again. Whereupon the people expected some great manifestation or revelation from him; but, instead thereof, he began to tell them what entertainment he had met with how one woman gave him skimmed milk, another butter-milk, and another good milk so that the people were obliged to take him out of the pulpit again and carry him home... By this people may see what came upon him that cursed the light, which light is the life in Christ, the Word."

Edinburgh endeavoured to deal with this troubler of Israel in a scrupulously orderly and legal fashion. On the 13th of October, 1657, Fox was summoned to Cromwell's Council, and asked what business it was that had brought him to Scotland; and when no satisfactory answer was given, he was commanded to leave the country within a seven-night. In vain the prophet pleaded with his accusers that at least he might have as patient a hearing as Herod gave to John the Baptist, and even the heathen Pharaoh vouchsafed to Aaron and his friend Moses. These appeals to Scripture precedent only provoked a chorus of angry exclamations of "Withdraw, withdraw." But Fox was not the kind of man to consent to banishment. Like John Knox himself, he was one who never feared the face of man, and, some weeks after sentence was passed on him, he had the courage to return to Edinburgh and enter it in open day, "as it were against the cannon's mouth or the sword's point," fearlessly passing three sentries and a mainguard on the way.

The truth is that neither guard nor sentries took any notice of Fox, and the Council had ceased to trouble themselves about him. He had come to be regarded as an innocent enthusiast who might safely be permitted to go his own way in peace. Some degree of physical violence would occasionally be offered him. In one part of the Journal he records that "we went among the Highlanders, who were so devilish they had like to have spoiled us and our horses, for they ran at us with pitchforks." But for the most part the missionaries had the mortification to find that they were treated with an aloofness and indifference which were far worse than opposition. In Glasgow "a meeting was appointed, but not one of the town came to it." When the travellers pushed northwards to awake the people of Stirling to a knowledge of the truth, "no meeting could be got amongst them in the town, they were so closed up in darkness." At Perth they fared no better. "Alexander Parker went and stood upon the market cross, with a Bible in his hand, and declared the truth amongst the soldiers and market people; but the Scots, being a dark, carnal people, gave little heed, nor hardly took notice what was said."

Scotland, it is clear, was not to be converted to the inner light. A few here and there did exhibit what Fox called a "tenderness" to the word preached. At one place he encountered a band of ruffianly looking robbers under a hedge, whom he so movingly exhorted that they vowed to turn over a new leaf and live honest. At another place "many were convinced, among whom was one called a lady, who afterwards went to warn Oliver Cromwell and Charles Fleetwood of the day of the Lord that was coming upon them." But on the whole it is to be feared that Fox turned his horse's head southwards and rode back to England a disappointed man. The seed he had brought with him was, no doubt, altogether a right seed, but alas! the soil in which he scattered it had proved sour and churlish. Only after many years could it be expected to yield much fruit. "When first I set my horse's feet upon Scottish ground, I felt the seed of God to sparkle about me, like innumerable sparks of fire. Not but there is abundance of thick cloddy earth of hypocrisy and fulness atop, and a briery brambly nature, which is to be turned up with God's word, and ploughed up with his spiritual plough, before God's seed brings forth heavenly and spiritual fruit to his glory. But the husbandman is to wait in patience."

VI - Daniel Defoe (1706-1708)