Born at Fenny Drayton (Drayton-in-the-Clay), Leicestershire, July, 1624: died Jan. 13, 1691. The founder of the Society of Friends. He was the son of Christopher Fox, a Puritan weaver, and in his youth was apprenticed to a shoemaker at Nottingham. About the age of twenty-five he began to disseminate as an itinerant lay preacher the doctrines peculiar to the Society of Friends, the organization of which he completed about 1669. He made missionary journeys to Scotland in 1657, to Ireland in 1669, to the West Indies and North America 1671–72, and to Holland in 1677 and 1684, and was frequently imprisoned for infraction of the laws against conventicles as at Lancaster and Scarborough 1663–66 and at Worcester 1673–74. He married in 1669, Margaret Fell, a widow, who was a woman of superior intellect and gave him much assistance in the founding of his sect. An edition of his “Works” was published at Philadelphia in 1831.
Personal
“Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern History,” says Teufelsdrockh, “is not the Diet of Worms, still less the Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other Battle; but an incident passed carelessly over by most Historians, and treated with some degree of ridicule by others: namely, George Fox’s making to himself a suit of Leather. This man, the first of the Quakers, and by trade a Shoemaker, was one of those, to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine Idea of the Universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, across all the hulls of Ignorance and earthly Degradation, shine through, in unspeakable Awfulness, unspeakable Beauty, on their souls: who therefore are rightly accounted Prophets, God-possessed; or even Gods, as in some periods it has chanced. Sitting in his stall; working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, this youth had, nevertheless, a Living Spirit belonging to him; also an antique Inspired Volume, through which, as through a window, it could look upwards, and discern its celestial Home. The task of a daily pair of shoes, coupled even with some prospect of victuals, and an honourable Mastership in Cordwainery, and perhaps the post of Thirdborough in his hundred, as the crown of long faithful sewing,—was nowise satisfaction enough to such a mind: but ever amid the boring and hammering came tones from that far country, came Splendours and Terrors; for this poor Cordwainer, as we said, was a Man; and the Temple of Immensity, wherein as Man he had been sent to minister, was full of holy mystery to him.”
He exhibits, in his own example, that the attainment of sincere and spiritual piety, is far more profitable than the learning and knowledge required to maintain the controverted points of religious practices; and proves, in his own case, that the study of the holy writings, assisted by divine grace, is of itself sufficient to produce newness of the heart, without any reliance upon the observances of outward forms and ceremonies.
I think it will be admitted that we have here the portrait not only of a strong, but of a lovable man. That keen and piercing eye of his was not always sparkling with indignation against hypocritical “professors”—it could also shed tears of sympathy with the sorrowful, and there was something in his face which little children loved. To sum up in fewest possible words the impression made by his words and works upon one who studies them across the level of two centuries: he was a man of lion-like courage and adamantine strength of will, absolutely truthful, devoted to the fulfilment of what he believed to be his God-appointed mission, and without any of those side-long looks at worldly promotion and aggrandizement which many sincere leaders of Church parties have cast at intervals of their journey. The chief defect in Fox’s character will perhaps be best described in the words of Carlyle—“Cromwell found George Fox’s enormous sacred self-confidence none of the least of his attainments.”
General
One assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my own experience, that there exist folios on the human understanding, and the nature of man, which would have a far juster claim to their high rank and celebrity, if, in the whole huge volume, there could be found as much fulness of heart and intellect, as bursts forth in many a simple page of George Fox.
I have read quite through the ponderous folio of George Fox…. Pray how may I return it to Mr. Shewell, at Ipswich? I fear to send such a treasure by a stagecoach; not that I am afraid of the coachman or the guard’s reading it, but it might be lost. Can you put me in a way of sending it in safety? The kind-hearted owner trusted it to me for six months; I think I was about as many days in getting through it, and I do not think that I skipped a word of it.
For my part, born and educated in this Society, I have seen enough to induce me to confess, that for its peculiarities I have little respect; for its great leading principles, the highest veneration. Amongst all the various society I have mingled in, I have nowhere seen a greater purity of life and sentiment; a more enviable preservation of a youth-like tenderness of conscience; a deeper sense of the obligations of justice; of the beauty of punctuality; or so sweet a maintenance of the domesticities of life. A thousand memories of youth, and youthful actions now past—a thousand happy and tender associations—bind me in affection to it. I look with a grateful complacency on the luminous views of truth which George Fox drew from the great archives of Christianity, as a glorious legacy to the world; which has already received mighty benefits therefrom, and is now prepared to reap still greater.
John Sterling is interesting himself much about George Fox, whose life he means to write. He sadly misses his earnest, prophetic spirit in the present day, and thinks Carlyle the only one who at all represents it…. Sterling has finished George Fox’s Journal, which has interested him much, though he does not find it as remarkable as he had expected—less originality and outflashing of the man’s peculiar nature.
He was so far from knowing many languages, that he knew none; nor can the most corrupt passage in Hebrew be more unintelligible to the unlearned, than his English often is to the most acute and attentive reader.
The influence of the career of George Fox is best appreciated by considering the subsequent character and action of the Society of Friends, of which he was the organiser. For few religious sects have been more thoroughly molded by their early leaders, and, so to speak, stereotyped as to their future constitution, than that Christian body.
An illegitimate son of the Church in a time of religious excitement, one of the most extraordinary men of genius in this eccentric generation. He was a grave, sober, reflective man, with no outgoings of volatile imagination, buoyant egotism, or healthy energy in any shape; as passive, unexcited, vacuous, as Bunyan was active, excitable, teeming with creative energy,—not pouring out force, but letting the world flow in upon him, judging and measuring the traditions and opinions floating about him, and striving in a calm way to reduce the bewildering mass to consistent clearness. Probably the more he pondered, the more he entangled himself in perplexing mazes, and he finally ceased to ponder, and took refuge in a set of arbitrary dogmas…. His style is more compact, and has greater graphic felicity of plain language, than Bunyan’s, but it has none of the Pilgrim’s figurative richness.
The most enthusiastic admirer of Fox need feel no sensitiveness at the exposure of his greatest defects, for after all deductions there will still remain in any fair characterization enough to fill the candid observer with highest respect.
The bibliography of Fox’s writings fill fifty-three pages of Smith’s Catalogue…. There can be no question of the healthiness and strength of his moral fibre. It is remarkable that Wesley, who was acquainted with Barclay’s “Apology,” never mentions Fox. Yet the early quakerism anticipated methodism in many important points, as well as in the curious detail of conducting the business of meetings by means of answers to queries. The literary skill of the “Apology” has drawn readers to it rather than to Fox’s amorphous writings; but for pure quakerism, not yet fixed (1676) in scholastic forms, it is necessary to go to Fox.
He is deficient in imagination and poetry. Stern, bare facts are his province, and he lays them before the reader with absolute impartiality. Of much the same religious opinions as John Bunyan, he differs widely from him, looking upon life with the eye of a moralist, and not of a poet. There are no flowers of imagination in his writings. He is no genius, no great writer. A plain earnest man, thinking only of his mission and never of himself, he tells us the story of his life in plain earnest words, without self-consciousness and without effort. He is a man of sound common sense, great readiness of wit and undaunted courage. He, here and there, displays a certain grim humour and occasionally a touch of pathos. The main charms of his journal seem to consist in its sincerity and truthfulness. George Fox’s style is emphatically the right sort for his matter. The interest of the reader is sustained but never inflamed. He carries conviction and arouses our sympathies by his unaffectedness and simplicity.
Fox was in prison oft in days when prisons were sickening receptacles of indescribable filth. His teaching, directed as it was against the intellectual formalities of Puritanism, was as effective as had been the Puritan attack upon the ceremonial formalities of Laud. Moreover, Fox’s uncomplaining acceptance of every evil that befell him, and, above all, the sincerity exhibited by his refusal to strive with the ruffians who struck him gained him many a disciple who would not have been won over by the most attractive preaching. His sobriety of judgment—within certain limits—was as remarkable as his spiritual exaltation, and after thousands of excitable converts had swelled the numbers of the society it was George Fox who was the restraining influence in their midst.
In spite of his extraordinary interpretations of Scripture, he had in all practical matters great shrewdness and common sense…. Nor is it fair to judge him by his ungrammatical English, which had to be corrected for publication by better-educated Quakers…. Even to this day one cannot read Fox’s “Journal” without feeling the wonderful power and spirit of the man, and at times the homely beauty of his words.
