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“Poore and in Necessity”: Margaret Fell and Quaker Female Philanthropy in Northwest England in the Late Seventeenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Bonnelyn Young Kunze
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Extract

“He that stoppeth his Ears at the Cry of the Poor, he also shall cry and not be heard” was the warning of Thomas Lawson to Parliament at the time of Charles II's restoration to the English throne in 1660. Lawson, a Quaker school teacher and notable botanist, addressed his special appeal for poor relief to the Restoration Parliament. He, like other Quaker leaders of his day, urged those in authority “let not a Settlement for the Poor be forgotten.” The Quaker movement drew its members from a cross section of the social orders of seventeenth-century England, including a significant number of poor from the lower orders. Although appeals for poor relief were not unique to the Quakers, Thomas Law-son expressed a typical Quaker viewpoint of social obligation to the impecunious. The Quakers consistently addressed the problem of poor relief within their community in practical terms from their earliest organization in 1652.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , Winter 1989 , pp. 559 - 580
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1989

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References

1 Lawson, Thomas, An Appeal to the Parliament Concerning the Poor, That There may not be a Beggar in England (London, 1660), pp. 1, 4Google Scholar; Vann, Richard T., The Social Development of English Quakerism (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), pp. 50, 73Google Scholar. Vann notes that other religious groups like the Anglicans and the Roman Catholics also drew large numbers of their members from the poor. For a general overview of early Quaker poor relief, see Lloyd, Arnold, Quaker Social History (London, 1950), ch. 3.Google Scholar

2 Judge Thomas Fell died in 1658 and bequeathed a widow's portion of the estate to his wife which constituted fifty acres surrounding the Hall with its farms and buildings, as long as she remained a widow. English common law fixed the widow's provision usually as one third of the husband's estate. Because her widow's jointure was fifty acres we can estimate that the size of the Swarthmore estate was close to 150 acres. Other evidence tends to verify this figure. See Kunze, Bonnelyn Young, “The Family, Social and Religious Life of Margaret Fell” (Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 1986), ch. 3Google Scholar. See also Ross, Isabel, Margaret Fell, Mother of Quakerism, 2nd ed. (York, 1984), ch. 18Google Scholar; Wrightson, Keith and Levine, David, Poverty and Piety in an English Village (New York, 1979), p. 23.Google Scholar

3 Judge Fell was a notable of the county in the 1640s and 1650s. Politically, he was a parliamentarian during the civil war, having sat for Parliament in 1645 as a recruiter member for Lancaster. See the DNB for details of the county offices that Fell held prior to 1658.

4 See my forthcoming book, Margaret Fell and the Rise of Quakerism. Concerning widows and estate rights, see Holderness, B. A., “Widows in pre-industrial society: an essay upon their economic functions,” in Smith, Richard M., ed., Land Kinship and Life-Cycle (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 423–442Google Scholar; and Outhwaite, R. B., ed., Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage (New York, 1981).Google Scholar

5 Penney, Norman, ed., The Household Account Book of Sarah Fell (Cambridge, 1920Google Scholar) [hereafter cited as SFAB]. See also Isabel Ross, Margaret Fell, ch. 18; Shammas, Carole, “The World Women Knew: Women Workers in the North of England During the Late Seventeenth Century,” in Dunn, Richard S. and Dunn, Mary Maples, eds., The World of William Penn (Philadelphia, 1986), pp. 99–115Google Scholar [hereafter cited as WWP].

6 Swarthmore Women's Monthly Meeting Minutes (hereafter cited as SWMM), PRO, Preston, Lanes. 1671-1700. The only business of the first women's monthly meeting held at Swarthmoor in October 1671 was the taking of a collection for the poor. Speizman, Milton D. and Kronick, Jane C., “A Seventeenth-Century Quaker Women's Declaration,” Signs 1, 1 (1975): 243CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Kunze, “The Family,” ch. 4.

7 Beier, A. L., Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England (London, 1985), pp. xxi-xxii, 52-54, 118–119, ch. 9Google Scholar; idem, The Problem of the Poor in Tudor and Early Stuart England (London, 1983), pp. 2-7, 13, 29-35; Arkell, Tom, “The Incidence of Poverty in England in the Later Seventeenth Century,” Social History (January 1987): 23–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an overview of poverty and poor relief see: Leonard, E. M., The Early History of English Poor Relief (New York, 1900)Google Scholar; Lipson, Ephraim, The Economic History of England, 3 vols. (London, 1915-1931)Google Scholar; Slack, Paul, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London and New York, 1988)Google Scholar; Wales, Tim, “Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle: some evidence from seventeenth-century Norfolk,” in Smith, , Land Kinship and Life-Cycle, pp. 351-40Google Scholar

8 Slack, . Poverty and Policy, pp. 43–44Google Scholar; see also Wrightson, Keith, English Society, 1580-1680 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1982), ch. 5Google Scholar; Beier, Maslerless Men, ch. 2; Arkell, , “The Incidence of Poverty,” pp. 41Google Scholar et passim; James, Margaret, Social Problems and Policy During the Puritan Revolution (London, 1930), ch. 6Google Scholar; Thirsk, Joan, “Agricultural Conditions in England, Circa 1680,” WWP, pp. 87–97Google Scholar. See also Tawney, R. H. and Power, Eileen, eds., Tudor Economic Documents II (London, 1924), pp. 346-62.Google Scholar

9 Slack, , Poverty and Policy, pp. 200, 205Google Scholar; see Clay, C. G. A., Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500-1700, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1984), 1: ch. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clay likewise claims that the “hospitality” of the rich in the late sixteenth century gave way to compulsory poor rates by the end of the seventeenth century and the emergence of workhouses for the poor, especially in larger towns.

10 Beier, A. L., Maslerless Men, pp. 52-54, 118-19, ch. 4Google Scholar; Slack, , Poverty and Policy, pp. 75-77, 80Google Scholar; Wales, , “Poverty, poor-relief,” pp. 360, 366Google Scholar; Holderness, , “Widows in pre-industrial society,” p. 428Google Scholar; Willen, Diane, “Women in the Public Sphere in Early Modern England: the Case of the Urban Working Poor,” Sixteenth-Century Journal 19 (1988): 559-75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 James, , Social Problems, p. 244Google Scholar; Victoria County History, Lancashire, 2: 298-99Google Scholar, Thirsk, WWP, p. 89; Jordan, W. K., The Social Institutions of Lancashire (Manchester, 1962), pp. 5–8.Google Scholar

12 Jordan's, W. K. two studies, Philanthropy in England (1959)Google Scholar and The Social Institutions of Lancashire cover the period preceding and overlapping the rise of Quakerism (1652). Jordan dismissed the subject of sectarian charity, saying “The sectaries…were so engrossed with their spiritual vision…that they gave but scant attention to the more pedestrian problem of poverty” (Philanthropy), p. 205. More recently Paul Slack has alluded to Quaker close involvement in local poor relief, and B. A. Holdemess claims that “Quakers and Baptists…lent money and offered sales credit as promiscuously and extensively as conformists among the countrymen who acted as money lenders,” (“Widows in pre-industrial society,” p. 441). See Lloyd, , Quaker Social History, p. 34Google Scholar, on Quaker independence from parish poor relief; and Mullett, Michael, Radical Religious Movements in Early Modern Europe (London, 1980), pp. 41-46, 65–68.Google Scholar

13 The Journal of George Fox, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1911), 1: 55Google Scholar; see Benson, Lewis, Concordance of Fox's Works, p. 966Google Scholar; Hill, Christopher, The Experience of Defeat (New York, 1984), p. 139.Google Scholar

14 Kunze, , “An Unpublished Work of Margaret Fell,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (December 1986): 451Google Scholar; Fell, Margaret, A Brief Collection of Remarkable Passages and Occurrences Relating to the Birth, Education, Life, Conversion, Travels Services, and Deep Sufferings of that Ancient Eminent, and Faithful Servant of the Lord, Margaret Fell: but by her Second Marriage, Margaret Fox (London, 1710), p. 97.Google Scholar

15 Mullett, , Radical Religious, pp. 41-46, 65–68Google Scholar; Mullett, Michael, ed., Early Lancaster Friends (Lancaster, 1978)Google Scholar; idem, “The Assembly of the People of God,” pp. 19-20; Braifhwaite, William C., The Second Period of Quakerism, 2nd ed. (York, 1979), pp. 560, 567Google Scholar; Lloyd, (Quaker Social History, p. 33)Google Scholar comments that Quakers classified their poor into three categories: “those poor by the hand of Providence…those poor by 'sloth and carelessness,’…those poor by oppression of persecutors….” See also Barbour, Hugh, The Quakers in Puritan England (New Haven, 1964), p. 175.Google Scholar

16 Swarthmoor Men's Monthly Meeting minutes (SMMM), PRO, Preston, Lanes. 1668-74, pp. 43, 93. Fox's contemporary and friend Robert Barclay similarly expressed Quaker concern for poor relief (Barclay, Robert, Anarchy of the Ranters [1674], pp. 84–85).Google Scholar

17 William Penn, in an early edition of No Cross, No Crown, called for an alleviation of the misery of “oppressed tenants” with their “pale faces” due to “pinched bellies” and “naked backs,” whose “sweat and tedious labour” was given for the benefit of the rich. However, after his European mission in 1677, Penn “urged the poor to be silent and patient and to trust in the Lord,” and in the 1682 edition of his No Cross, No Crown, he suggested to the “civil magistrate that if the Money which is expended in every Parish in such vain Fashions, as wearing of Laces, Jewels, Unnecessary Ribbons,…Costly Furniture…with what is commonly consumed in Taverns, Feasts, Gaming, etc. could be collected into a Public Stock…there might be Reparation to the broken Tenants, Work-Houses for the Able and Almshouses for the Aged and Impotent” (Barbour, , Quakers in Puritan England, pp. 170, 250Google Scholar); Endy, Melvin, William Penn and Early Quakerism (Princeton, 1973), pp. 346-47Google Scholar; George Fox had made a similar suggestion to Parliament in 1659. For an example of a successful Quaker “workhouse” in Bristol in the 1690s see Lloyd, , Quaker Social History, pp. 40–41.Google Scholar

18 Fox, , Works 7Google Scholar, Epistle 200, “The line of righteousness and justice stretched forth over all merchants…,” pp. 194-95; see also Frost, J. William, The Quaker Family in Colonial America (New York, 1973), pp. 56, 197, 201Google Scholar; Lloyd, , Quaker Social History, pp. 36–37Google Scholar. For an interpretation of Puritan attitudes toward the deserving and undeserving poor see Daniel Baugh, A., “Poverty, Protestantism and Political Economy: English Attitudes Toward the Poor, 1660-1800,” in Baxter, Stephen B., ed., England's Rise to Greatness (Berkeley, 1983), pp. 63–107Google Scholar. On the early organization of women's meetings, see Kunze, “The Religious,” ch. 4.

19 In addition to the analysis of 1676, examples are drawn from the period between 1673 and 1678. My figures vary somewhat from those of Carole Shammas', who has relied on the SFAB. Shammas is concerned with the degree of job segregation on the Fell farm and she asks different questions. Shammas cites briefly Sarah Fell's banking and charitable activities and comments that aid to the poor women recorded in the SFAB was the result of the personal interest of the Fell women (Shammas, WWP, p. 102).

20 Because no banks existed outside London before the eighteenth century, local financial services provided in towns were important. Characteristically, lawyers acted as local bankers by investing their client's surplus capital in loans to local borrowers, secured by mortgages or bonds with interest. Extensive use of credit was commonplace in rural areas where cash was scarce (Clay, , Economic Expansion and Social Change, 1: 179–187Google Scholar; Shammas, WWP, pp. 102-03). The atypical feature of the banking carried on at Swarthmoor Hall was that it was conducted by a woman.

21 Ross, , Margaret Fell, pp. 62, 64, 66Google Scholar; Kunze, “The Family,” ch. 6.

22 Clay, , Economic Expansion, 1: 176–191Google Scholar; cf. Wrightson, Keith, English Society, pp. 52–55Google Scholar; Holderness, , “Widows in pre-industrial society,” pp. 428, 435-36, 440.Google Scholar

23 SFAB pp. 267, 277, 281, 309, 313, 327, 383, 369, 338, 387.

24 Fox, , Works, pp. 8, 191, 195Google Scholar; Benson, , Concordance, pp. 965-66.Google Scholar

25 The rate was similar to that fixed in the Pennsylvania colony in 1700 of 8% which was subsequently lowered to 6% in 1723. On Quaker business ethics, see Raistrick, Arthur, Quakers in Science and Industry (New York, 1968), pp. 46–48Google Scholar; also Frost, , The Quaker Family in Colonial America, p. 200.Google Scholar

26 Regratresses were female peddlers who bought and sold produce and goods from the Fells and other local families. The term appears in Clark, Alice, The Working Life of Women (1919, repr. London, 1982)Google Scholar. Shammas also uses this term to refer to female petty retail. She estimates that nearly 90% of the women of the area were involved in this form of labor (WWP, pp. 103-104, 107). Most peddlers who dealt with the Fells appear to have been women.

27 SWMM minutes, PRO, Preston, Lanes., pp. 38-39; SFAB, pp. 250, 257.

28 SWMM minutes, p. 102, passim; SFAB, pp. 306, 309, 433.

29 SWMM minutes, pp. 34-51, 167; SFAB, p. 297, passim.

30 SWMM minutes, pp. 28, 32, 39-41, 50, 58-59, 86, 88, 107, 138, 142-43; SFAB, passim. See Paul Slack for a detailed discussion of “shallow” and “deep” poverty (Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England), pp. 7, 39, 52-54, 190.

31 SWMM minutes, p. 76; SFAB, pp. 17, 176-77, 179, 525.

32 SWMM minutes, p. 67.

33 SWMM minutes, p. 61; SFAB, p. 265.

34 SWMM minutes, pp. 105-107, 113, 168-69.

35 Mullett, Michael, Early Lancaster Friends, pp. 19–20Google Scholar; Arkell, , “The Incidence of Poverty in England in the Later Seventeenth Century,” pp. 38–39.Google Scholar

36 SWMM minutes, p. 86.

37 SWMM minutes, pp. 83-139.

38 Lloyd, , Quaker Social History, pp. 34–35Google Scholar. A minute of the London Six Weeks Meeting of 1680 sheds light on orphan care. It agreed that “ye charge the women friends are at in nursing andbringing up friends children that died poor…by the respective monthly meetings…be defrayed out of the publick Cash [stock]” (Six Weeks Meeting Minute Book, 1: 20, April 1680, pp. 120-121).

39 SMMM minutes, pp. 13, 23, 27, 54, 77, 79, 81, 85-86, 92-93. I have compared the activities of the SWMM with those of the Swarthmoor Men's Monthly Meeting (SMMM), as they worked in close cooperation with one another, and the SMMM seldom nullified the activities of the SWMM. The minutes of the SMMM are extant for the years 1668 to 1674, while the minutes of the SWMM are continuous from 1671 onward. The SWMM and the SMMM regularly collected funds called the “stock” from their members to finance their Quaker religious, political, and charitable activities.

40 Penn's philanthropy over the same period as the Fell accounts consisted mostly of poor taxes paid (Dunn, Richard and Dunn, Mary Maples, eds., The Papers of William Penn, 2 vols. [Philadelphia, 1981], 1: 600-15CrossRefGoogle Scholar). The Daniel Fleming Accounts were kept by his steward, John Bankes (see Fleming Papers, ED/RY, Kendal Public Record Office, Lanes.). The account of the Countesse of Pembroke of Appleby Castle in Westmorland covers only August and October 1673. The entries for her household staff indicates that she owned several residences and personally oversaw the management of her estate (see Whiteside, Joseph, “Some Accounts of Anne, Countesse of Pembroke,” Transactions of Cumberland and Westmoreland Archeological and Antiquarian Society 5, n.s. [1905]: 188–201.Google Scholar)

41 Alan Macfarlane, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin (New York, 1970), pp. 51-52. Beier says the “Protestant ethic” did not bring about any new “critique of poverty.” This may be true on the whole, however, the statment must be modified in reference to the Quakers who not only issued a renewed “critique on poverty,” but implemented their ideas in a coherent fashion (Beier, , Problem of Poor, pp. 14–15Google Scholar; Maslerless Men, p. 5.)

42 Charity may also may have been given in kind, which helps to explain the small portions of money given (Lloyd, , Quaker Social History, p. 34Google Scholar).

43 Kunze. “The Religious,” ch. 3. During the year 1676 there were approximately 210 persons carried on a social or business relationship with the Fells. Of these 210 persons, 54 were known Quakers, thus making up 25% of the total network in 1676. The remaining 75% had possible Quaker connections, or were sympathetic to Quakers, or were non-Quakers, or their religious persuasion is unknown. The 25% Quaker total underestimates the numerical strength of the Quaker network surrounding the Fell family.

44 Lloyd, , Quaker Social History, pp. 34, 36, 42Google Scholar; Endy, , William Penn and Early Quakerism, p. 356Google Scholar; cf. Vann, , The Social Development of English Quakerism, pp. 143-47Google Scholar; this cohesiveness among Fell's circle of women is rooted in the larger question of gender of early Quaker theology: its stress on gender parity in the spiritual sphere and its application in the organization of the women's meetings, see Kunze, “The Religious,” chs. 4, 7.

45 Slack, , Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England, pp. 200, 205-08Google Scholar; Mullett, , Early Lancaster Friends, pp. 19–20.Google Scholar

46 Wrightson, and Levine, , Poverty and Piety in an English Village, pp. 183-84Google Scholar; Vann, , The Social Development of English Quakerism, p. 148.Google Scholar

47 Baugh, , “Poverty, Protestantism and Political Economy,” pp. 63–107Google Scholar; cf. the individual philanthropy of the puritan Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick in Mendelson, Sara Heller, The Menial World of Stuart Women (Amherst, 1987), ch. 2.Google Scholar

48 For Fell's prominent religious and social status in early Quakerism see Kunze, , “Religious Authority and Social Status: The Friendship of Margaret Fell, George Fox, and William Penn,” Church History (June 1988): 170–186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar