CHAP. V.
Disowning—foundation of the right of disowning—disowning no slight punishment—wherein the hardship or suffering consists.
I shall conclude the discipline of the Quakers by making a few remarks on the subject of disowning.
The Quakers conceive they have a right to excommunicate or disown; because persons, entering into any society, have a right to make their own reasonable rules of membership, and so early as the year 1663, this practice had been adopted by George Fox, and those who were in religious union with him. Those, who are born in the society, are bound of course, to abide by these rules, while they continue to be the rules of the general will, or to leave it. Those who come into it by convincement, are bound to follow them, or not to sue for admission into membership. This right of disowning, which arises from the reasonableness of the thing, the Quakers consider to have been pointed out and established by the author of the christian religion, who determined that [34]if a disorderly person, after having received repeated admonitions, should still continue disorderly, he should be considered as an alien by the church.
[Footnote 34: Matt. 18.v. 17.]
The observations, which I shall make on the subject of disowning, will be wholly confined to it as it must operate as a source of suffering to those, who are sentenced to undergo it. People are apt to say, "where is the hardship of being disowned? a man, though disowned by the Quakers, may still go to their meetings for worship, or he may worship if he chooses, with other dissenters, or with those of the church of England, for the doors of all places of worship are open to those, who desire to enter them." I shall state therefore in what this hardship consists, and I should have done it sooner, but that I could never have made it so well understood as after an explanation had been given of the discipline of the Quakers, or as in the present place.
There is no doubt that a person, who is disowned, will be differently affected by different considerations. Something will depend upon the circumstance, whether he considers himself as disowned for a moral or a political offence. Something, again, whether he has been in the habit of attending the meetings for discipline, and what estimation he may put upon these.
But whether he has been regular or not in these attendances, it is certain that he has a power and a consequence, while he remains in his own society, which he loses when he leaves it, or when he becomes a member of the world. The reader will have already observed, that in no society is a man, if I may use the expression, so much of a man, as in that of the Quakers, or in no society is there such an equality of rank and privileges. A Quaker is called, as we have seen, to the exercise of important and honourable functions.
He sits in his monthly meeting, as it were in council, with the rest of the members. He sees all equal but he sees none superior, to himself. He may give his advice on any question. He may propose new matter. He may argue and reply. In the quarterly meetings he is called to the exercise of the same privileges, but on a larger scale. And at the yearly meeting he may, if he pleases, unite in his own person the offices of council, judge, and legislator. But when he leaves the society, and goes out into the world, he has no such station or power. He sees there every body equal to himself in privileges, and thousands above him. It is in this loss of his former consequence that he must feel a punishment in having been disowned. For he can never be to his own feelings what he was before. It is almost impossible that he should not feel a diminution of his dignity and importance as a man.
Neither can he restore himself to these privileges by going to a distant part of the kingdom and residing among quakers there, on a supposition that his disownment may be concealed. For a Quaker, going to a new abode among Quakers, must carry with him a certificate of his conduct from the last monthly meeting which he left, or he cannot be received as a member.
But besides losing these privileges, which confer consequence upon him, he looses others of another kind. He cannot marry in the society. His affirmation will be no longer taken instead of his oath. If a poor man, he is no longer exempt from the militia, if drawn by submitting to three months imprisonment; nor is he entitled to that comfortable maintenance, in case of necessity, which the society provide for their own poor.
To these considerations it may not perhaps be superfluous to add, that if he continues to mix with the members of his own society, he will occasionally find circumstances arising, which will remind him of his former state: and if he transfers his friendship to others, he will feel awkward and uneasy, and out of his element, till he has made his temper, his opinions, and his manners, harmonize with those of his new associates of the world.
PECULIAR CUSTOMS OF THE QUAKERS.
CHAP. I. SECT. I.
Dress—Quakers distinguished by their dress from others—great extravagance in dress in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—this extravagance had reached the clergy—but religious individuals kept to their antient dresses—the dress which the men of this description wore in those days—dress of the women of this description also—George Fox and the Quakers springing out of these, carried their plain habits with them into their new society.
I have now explained, in a very ample manner, the moral education and discipline of the Quakers. I shall proceed to the explanation of such customs, as seem peculiar to them as a society of christians.
The dress of the Quakers is the first custom of this nature, that I purpose to notice. They stand distinguished be means of it from all other religious bodies The men wear neither lace, frills, ruffles, swords, nor any of the ornaments used by the fashionable world. The women wear neither lace, flounces, lappets, rings, bracelets, necklaces, ear-rings, nor any thing belonging to this class. Both sexes are also particular in the choice of the colour of their clothes. All gay colours such as red, blue, green, and yellow, are exploded. Dressing in this manner, a Quaker is known by his apparel through the whole kingdom. This is not the case with any other individuals of the island, except the clergy; and these, in consequence of the black garments worn by persons on account of the death of their relations, are not always distinguished from others.
I know of no custom among the Quakers, which has more excited the curiosity of the world, than this of their dress, and none, in which they have been more mistaken in their conjectures concerning it.
[35]In the early times of the English History, dress had been frequently restricted by the government.—Persons of a certain rank and fortune were permitted to wear only cloathing of a certain kind. But these restrictions and distinctions were gradually broken down, and people, as they were able and willing, launched out into unlimited extravagance in their dress. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and down from thence to the time when the Quakers first appeared, were periods, particularly noticed for prodigality in the use of apparel, there was nothing too expensive or too preposterous to be worn. Our ancestors also, to use an ancient quotation, "were never constant to one colour or fashion two months to an end." We can have no idea by the present generation, of the folly in such respects, of these early ages. But these follies were not confined to the laiety. Affectation of parade, and gaudy cloathing, were admitted among many of the clergy, who incurred the severest invectives of the poets on that account. The ploughman, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, is full upon this point. He gives us the following description of a Priest
"That hye on horse wylleth to ride,
In glytter ande gold of great araye,
'I painted and pertred all in pryde,
No common Knyght may go so gaye;
Chaunge of clothyng every daye,
With golden gyrdles great and small,
As boysterous as is here at baye;
All suche falshed mote nede fell."
[Footnote 35: See Strut's Antiquities.]
To this he adds, that many of them had more than one or two mitres, embellished with pearls, like the head of a queen, and a staff of gold set with jewels, as heavy as lead. He then speaks of their appearing out of doors with broad bucklers and long swords, or with baldrics about their necks, instead of stoles, to which their basellards were attached.
"Bucklers brode and sweardes longe,
Baudryke with baselards kene."
He then accuses them with wearing gay gowns of scarlet and green colours, ornamented with cut-work, and for the long pykes upon their shoes.
But so late as the year 1652 we have the following anecdote of the whimsical dress of a clergyman. John Owen, Dean of Christ church, and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, is represented an wearing a lawn-band, as having his hair powdered and his hat curiously cocked. He is described also as wearing Spanish leather-boots with lawn-tops, and snake-bone band-strings with large tassels, and a large set of ribbands pointed at his knees with points or tags at the end. And much about the same time, when Charles the second was at Newmarket, Nathaniel Vincent, doctor of divinity, fellow of Clare-hall, and chaplain in ordinary to his majesty, preached before him. But the king was so displeased with the foppery of this preacher's, dress, that he commanded the duke of Monmouth, then chancellor of the university, to cause the statutes concerning decency of apparel among the clergy to be put into execution, which was accordingly done. These instances are sufficient to shew, that the taste for preposterous and extravagant dress must have operated like a contagion in those times, or the clergy would scarcely have dressed themselves in this ridiculous and censurable manner.
But although this extravagance was found among many orders of society at the time of the appearance of George Fox, yet many individuals had set their faces against the fashions of the world. These consisted principally of religious people of different denominations, most of whom were in the middle classes of life. Such persons were found in plain and simple habits notwithstanding the contagion of the example of their superiors in rank. The men of this description generally wore plain round hats with common crowns. They had discarded the sugar-loaf hat, and the hat turned up with a silver clasp on one side, as well as all ornaments belonging to it, such as pictures, feathers, and bands of various colours. They had adopted a plain suit of clothes. They wore cloaks, when necessary, over these. But both the clothes and the cloaks were of the same colour. The colour of each of them was either drab or grey. Other people who followed the fashions, wore white, red, green, yellow, violet, scarlet, and other colours, which were expensive, because they were principally dyed in foreign parts. The drab consisted of the white wool undyed, and the grey of the white wool mixed with the black, which was undyed also. These colours were then the colours of the clothes, because they were the least expensive, of the peasants of England, as they are now of those of Portugal and Spain. They had discarded also, all ornaments, such as of lace, or bunches of ribbands at the knees, and their buttons were generally of alchymy, as this composition was then termed, or of the same colour as their clothes.
The grave and religious women also, like the men, had avoided the fashions of their times. These had adopted the cap, and the black hood for their headdress. The black hood had been long the distinguishing mark of a grave matron. All prostitutes, so early as Edward the third, had been forbidden to wear it. In after-times it was celebrated by the epithet of venerable by the poets, and had been introduced by painters as the representative of virtue. When fashionable women had discarded it, which was the case in George Fox's time, the more sober, on account of these ancient marks of its sanctity, had retained it, and it was then common among them. With respect to the hair of grave and sober women In those days, it was worn plain, and covered occasionally by a plain hat or bonnet. They had avoided by this choice those preposterous head-dresses and bonnets, which none but those, who have seen paintings of them, could believe ever to have been worn. They admitted none of the large ruffs, that were then in use, but chose the plain handkerchief for their necks, differing from those of others, which had rich point, and curious lace. They rejected the crimson sattin doublet with black velvet skirts, and contented themselves with a plain gown, generally of stuff, and of a drab, or grey, or buff, or buffin colour, as it was called, and faced with buckram. These colours, as I observed before, were the colours worn by country people; and were not expensive, because they were not dyed. To this gown was added a green apron. Green aprons had been long worn in England, yet, at the time I allude to, they were out of fashion, so as to be ridiculed by the gay. But old fashioned people still retained them. Thus an idea of gravity was connected with them; and therefore religious and steady women adopted them, as the grave and sober garments of ancient times.
It may now be observed that from these religious persons, habited in this manner, in opposition to the fashions of the world, the primitive Quakers generally sprung. George Fox himself wore the plain grey coat that has been noticed, with alchymy buttons, and a plain leather girdle about his waist. When the Quakers therefore first met in religious union, they met in these simple clothes. They made no alteration in their dress on account of their new religion. They prescribed no form or colour as distinguishing marks of their sect, but they carried with them the plain habits of their ancestors into the new society, as the habits of the grave and sober people of their own times.