Immigration of the Irish Quakers into Pennsylvania, 1682-1750: with their early history in Ireland
  
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CHAPTER III.

THE BEGINNINGS OF QUAKERISM IN IRELAND
THE founder and leader of Quakerism in Ireland was William Edmundson (1627-1712), one of Cromwell's soldiers. He was born at Little Musgrave, in Westmoreland, England, in 1627, the son of John and Grace Edmundson. "My father," he says, "was well accounted among men who knew him and religious William Edmundson signature in what he knew." His parents died while he was quite young, and he was bound an apprentice in York to learn the carpenter's trade. Then, he relates, "I went in England into the Parliaments' Army, and there continued part of the War betwixt the King and Parliament; and when that was over, I went into Scotland under Oliver Cromwell in the year 1650." He was greatly influenced by the Puritan movement of the time, and during his apprenticeship and army life his mind was often exercised over religious questions. " Sometimes when I had been on Service most of the Day, and was lying down in my Tent at Night, then would arise in my Mind the eminent Dangers I had passed that Day, and the narrow Escape my Life had, and what would become of my Soul, if I had fallen.
In the Year 1651, the Scotch Army marched for England, we followed and engaged them at Worcester, and overthrew their Army." He was at the taking of the Isle of Man, then returned to England, and was quartered in Derbyshire, where at this time "the common Discourse of all Sorts of People was of the Quakers," but he did not have an opportunity of hearing any of them preach at this time. "After some Time spent in divers Exercises, we marched again for Scotland, at which Time I had a Charge of some Men for recruiting other Companies in Scotland, then left the Army, came back to England, and visited my Relations in the North; from thence rode into Derbyshire, and married a young woman, to whom I was contracted before.1 After some time I was about to settle in Derbyshire in the way of Shop-keeping, at which Time my Brother, [John] who was a soldier in Ireland, came into England to see his Relations and highly commending Ireland, pursuaded me to go and live there, which I, with my wife, concluded to do."2
Taking with him a stock of goods to commence a "Trade in Merchandise," William Edmundson, his wife, and servant took shipping at Whitehaven and landed at Dublin in 1652. On learnine of his brother's arrival, John Edmundson came down from the north of the island, where his troop was then stationed, and transported William and his household to the town of Antrim. Here William rented a house and opened a shop, his brother living with him. Trade being then very brisk, the goods were soon disposed of, and in 1653 William returned to England to renew his stock.
On coming into the north of England, he says, "George Fox and James Naylor were in that country, James Naylor having a Meeting about three Miles from where I was, I went to it with my eldest brother, Thomas, and another Kinsman, having an earnest Desire to have Converse with some of that People, retaining a Love for and believing well of them from the first hearing the Report of them, and I was glad of this Opportunity, and we were all three convinced of the Lord's blessed Truth." Having accomplished his business in England, he returned to Ireland, and in the spring of 1654 removed with his family from Antrim to Lurgan, in the County of Armagh, where he kept a shop and took some land for grazing cattle. In his new home the use of the plain language, the keeping on of his hat, and the Other peculiar Quaker customs which he had adopted since his convincement, were the cause of much wonder and offence to his neighbors, and socially and in his business relations he was subjected to much vexation and discomfort.
His wife and brother had been convinced of the principles of Friends shortly after his journey to England and they all now met together in a meeting twice a week at his house. He says, "In a while after four more were convinced; then we were seven that met together to wait upon God, and to worship Him in Spirit and Truth." Thus in the year 1654, at Lurgan was established the first meeting of Friends in Ireland.3
Now came a period of earnest and zealous proselyting on the part of missionaries from England. The first of the ministers to arrive were Miles Halhead, James Lancaster, and Miles Bateman, who came over from England in the early part of 1654, and made a short tour from town to town through the Island, preaching to the people, to magistrates, and to officers of the army. Having convinced many of the truth of their principles, they went into the north and took shipping at Belfast for England.4
The next year was an important one in the history of the Society of Friends in Ireland. Ten earnest preachers came over and laid the foundations of the most important Quaker strongholds in the island. John Tiffin was the first to arrive. He came to William Edmundson's at Lurean, and during his sojourn of five or six weeks many members were added to that meeting. He and William Edmundson went to neiehboring fairs and other public gatherings, explaining their principles and carrying on discussion with those of other beliefs. "Truth began to spread, tho' thro' great opposition; for now the Priests and People began to be alarmed in a rage, and Friends were exposed to great Sufferings upon several accounts, particularly, as the testimony of Truth was against all hireling Teachers and their forced maintenance, these made it their business to incense the Magistrates and Rulers against Friends." 5

Lurgan Friends Meeting House
Lurgan Friends Meeting House, Ireland

About this time William Edmundson went over Richard to England and conferred with George Fox, whom he had not yet seen, telling him of the convincement of Friends in Ireland, "of the Openness among People in the North of that Nation, to hear the Truth declared, and of the Want of ministering Friends in the Gospel there."6 Soon after his return to Lurgan, Richard Clayton came on a religious visit from England, and the two spent several days journeying on foot through the counties of Antrim. Londonderry, Tyrone, and Armagh. At Coleraine they preached in the streets, but the people drove them out of the town, so that they had to lodge in a cabin on the mountain. At Londonderry and Kilmore they met with better success, and at these places many were convinced and meetings were settled.
About the year 1655 two women ministers from London. Anne Gould and Juliann Wastwood, landed at Dublin and "all on Foot in Winter Time, wading Rivers, and dirty miry Ways."7 traveled in relisfious service to Londonderry, from there to Coleraine and through the country of the "Scotch People and Presbyterians" to Clough. Here the poor women sank down exhausted and disheartened, and Anne Gould was confined to bed. But William Edmundson happening to come that way. they were so rejoiced at seeing him that they recovered sufficiently to be taken to his home, where they were well cared for until their departure for England.
William Edmundson had now gained more experience as a minister, and traveled continually, preaching in public places and in churches. Other meetings sprang up, and "People more and more were convinced, insomuch that the Priests and Professors still raged, many tender people leaving them; and to revenge themselves they cast William Edmundson into prison," at Armagh.8 He was soon liberated, however, and came forth with even greater zeal than before. Soon after his liberation, he felt a religious calling to leave shopkeeping and to rent a farm in order that he might set the example of bearing testimony against tithes, for as yet no one had borne that testimony Edmundson in Ireland. With this in view. he and several other Friends and their families. leaving Lurgan Meeting well-settled, removed into the County of Cavan in the southern part of Ulster, where they rented land and began farming. Cavan Meeting was founded and many converts were made in that neighborhood. It was not long before these Friends experienced the sufferings they had anticipated. Many of them, for non-payment of tithes and other non-conformities, had their goods taken from them and were imprisoned.9
But the Quaker movement was not confined to the north of Ireland. At the same time that William Edmundson and his co-workers were spreading Quakerism through Ulster, other missionaries were working with equal zeal in the provinces of Leinster and Munster. In the beginning of the year, Elizabeth Fletcher and Elizabeth Smith, from England, landed at Dublin and made a few proselytes. For preaching in the Church of St. Audeon EUzabetk in that city, they were imprisioned by order of the Lord Mayor, in Newgate. After their release they had a meeting at the house of Richard Foukes, a tailor, near Polegate. This was the earliest meeting of Friends held in Dublin, althouogh the first established meeting in that city was at George Latham's near Polegate. From Dublin these faithful women traveled south into Munster, holding meetings in the towns through which they passed. At Youghall, among numerous converts, were Captain James Sicklemore and Lieutenant Robert Sandham, two of the Cromwellian soldiers stationed in that town. Elizabeth Fletcher and Elizabeth Smith were the first Quakers to enter Cork, and in that city an equal success attended their efforts.
The summer of this year, 1655, is memorable for the landing at Dublin of two of the most determined and courageous apostles of Quakerism, Francis Howgill and Edward Burrouorh.

Francis Howgill signature

Francis Howgill had been educated for the Church at one of the English universities, and his magnetic personality and persuasive eloquence drew so many to his doctrines that he is conspicuous inEdward Burrough signaturethe annals of Quakerism as one of the chief founders of the Society. Edward Burrough, perhaps not so polished a man as his companion, was one who performed every undertaking with all his might, and his power and vigor as a speaker were so marked that he was known as "A Son of Thunder."10 They spent three months of aggressive work in Dublin, holding successful meetings and issuing tracts of appeal to magistrates and soldiers. Then, leaving Edward Burrough to continue the work in Dublin, Francis Howgill set out in company with a cornet of the army, and others, for the dangerous journey to the south of the island, visiting only the "great towns and cities; for generally the country is without inhabitants, except bands of robbers, which wait for their prey and devour many."11 At Kilkenny and the coast towns of Waterford, Youghall, and Cork he was enabled to carry on successfully the work begun by the women Friends. At Bandon, a large market town, he was hospitably entertained by one Edward Cook, a man of ability and influence, "Cornet of Horse in Oliver Cromwell's own troop, and Receiver to the Lord Cork."12 They went together to the church, where Francis preached and where Edward Cook invited the people to a meeting at his house that evening. Many attended this meeting and there embraced the principles of Friends.13
At Kinsale, a great port town, Major Stoding, Governor of the fort, was kindly disposed, and numbers of the soldiers became Friends. Many meetings were held in the garrison, which so enraged the "priests" that they informed against the officers and sent to Dublin for a warrant ordering the arrest of the Quakers. The Governors of Kinsale and Cork, however, having a friendly regard for Francis Howgill, did not enforce the warrant and allowed him to go on with his work unmolested. For his encouragement of the Quakers Major Stoding, shortly afterward, was dismissed from the "commission of the peace" at Kinsale. Colonel Phayre, Governor of Cork, seems to have been especially impressed with Friends, for in a letter from Cork, Francis Howgill writes to Margaret Fell at Swarthmore Hall, the Headquarters, as it were, of the Society in England, that the Colonel has said, "More is done by the Quakers, than all the priests in the country have done [in] a hundred years." Francis then says of his work: " Now many are moved daily to bear witness against the priests: the work of the Lord is great,—glory to Him forever!"14


In the meantime Edward Burrough had left Dublin, and following Howgill's route came preaching through the towns to Cork, where he met Francis again after a separation of several months. In company with James Sickelmore and Edward Cook, they went to Limerick and attempted to speak in the Church, but were rudely driven out of the city. As they rode through the streets, Edward Burrough preached on horseback, and outside the city gates, he and his companions had an opportunity to speak to the great multitude that followed them. Richard Pearce, an apothecary, and others of the city, became Friends as a result of this preaching, and a flourishing meeting was established. The ministers now returned to Cork, but the "priests" had been so active during their absence that both Howgill and Burrough were arrested and carried to Dublin by order of Henry Cromwell. As they were conducted on the way, the guard of soldiers were kind to them and allowed them to hold meetings in the towns through which they passed. After seven months of active work they were finally banished from Ireland and compelled to embark at Dublin for England.
One of the most intrepid of these early ministers was Barbara Blaugden, who made two effective visits through the southern part of the island. After an adventurous voyage from England, she landed at Dublin on the very day that witnessed the enforced departure of Howgill and Burrough. Nothing daunted she gained admittance to Henry Cromwell, the Lord Lieutenant, and warned him of the consequences of his cruelty to her people. Her message seems to have had some effect, for Captain Rich, at whose house she was staying, told her that the Lord Lieutenant "was so troubled and so melancholy that he could not go to Bowles, nor to any other Pastime."15
The stream of Quaker missionaries continued to pour into the country so that nearly two hundred had come over before 1700. Dr. Rutty shows in his table, that during the first century of the history of the Society some five hundred and fifty men and women ministers visited Ireland.16
With the Restoration of Charles II., in 1660, Restoration of Friends everywhere looked for a respite from their persecutions, but the rising of the Fifth Monarchy men under Venner gave the clergy a pretext for checking the growing power of Quakerism, and an act was passed forbidding the Quakers to meet in public worship.17 As a result, persecutions among the Friends in Ireland were carried on with greater rigor than under the Commonwealth. William Edmundson says: "Now was King Charles coming in, and these Nations were in Persecutions Heaps of Confusion, and ran upon us as if they would have destroyed us at once, or swallow'd us up; breaking up our Meetings, taking us up in Highways, and haling us to Prison; so that it was a general Imprisonment of Friends in this Nation."18
At this time Edmundson was a prisoner at Marysborough, but obtained a short leave of absence from the sheriff, went to Dublin and petitioned the Earls of Orrery and Mountrath and Sir Morris Eustace, Chancellor, that Friends in the nation might be set at liberty. He says: "I was close excrcised in that Service, but the Lord's Power gave me Courage, opened my Way to proceed and gave Success to it; so that I got an Order for Friends' Liberty throughout the Nation, though they were full of Business; and Abundance of People of all Sorts attending." On this as on many similar occasions, he seems to have exerted a strong and subtle influence over those in power, and we may well believe that men were drawn to him by his attractive qualities of mind and person, as well as by his strong and noble character.
The persecutions, however, did not end here. The Church of England being now thoroughly established, the clergy bent all their efforts upon making the dissenters conform,19 and Friends continued to suffer for their non-conformity until the Act of Toleration for Protestant Dissenters was passed in 1689, in the reign of William and Mary. During the reign of Charles II., 1660- 1685, according to Rutty's table, seven hundred and eighty Friends suffered imprisonment.20

William Penn
William Penn: Armour Portrait

It was during this time of persecution that Thomas Loe, a gifted minister of Oxford, and at one time of Oxford University, made one of his frequent visits to Ireland, and at Cork converted to the principles of Quakerism the young cavalier, William Penn, the great founder of the Commonwealth on the Delaware.20
By 1668, the number of Friends had so greatly increased that it became necessary to adopt some form of church government, and William Edmundson, as one of the chief instruments in gathering and preserving the Society in Ireland, was a prime mover in the work of carrying out George Fox's scheme of organization in Ireland. Provincial meetings were established to be held once in six weeks, the chief business being to take care of the poor, the fatherless and the widows; to see that marriages were properly solemnized; and to watch over the moral conduct of the members. In the following year George Fox himself came over, and he and William Edmundson traveled all over the Island, establishing national half-year meetings and monthly meetings.22
Great alarm was created among the English and Scotch Protestants in Ireland, by the accession of James II. and by his measures taken for the restoration of the Catholic religion. The Earl of Tyrconnel, a strict Catholic, was sent over as commander of the forces, and immediately proceeded to disarm the Protestant militia and to place Irish Catholics in the Army. This innovation, and later Tyrconnel's appointment as Lord Lieutenant, together with the efforts of the Irish to recover their confiscated estates, and the raids of the Rapparees, caused the wildest alarm among the Protestants, and they trembled both for their estates and for their lives. Rumors of a general massacre, like that of the Rebellion of 1641, flew through the land, and many of the terrified people left the country or hastened to the fortified towns, such as Enniskillen and Londonderry, where at the latter place they bravely withstood the siege of James in 1689.23
In the war that followed, the Friends generally kept their places and maintained their meetings.24 In some districts, however, the danger was so great that members moved into the towns until the conflict was over.25 Those who remained were continually being robbed by the Irish soldiers and Rapparees. In this, as in many other trials which came upon him, William Edmundson stood forth as the sturdy champion of his sect, and on many occasions went to Dublin to solicit the government in behalf of Friends. Tyrconnel heard him with attention, and measures were taken with a view of protecting the Quakers from robbery; but such was the state of anarchy prevailing that no effectual remedy could be applied. As the Friends were known to be an inoffensive people, opposed to war, the Catholics in authority were disposed to shield them from the severities inflicted upon other Protestants. But, notwithstanding all the endeavors made, the Friends were exposed to great perils. Many of the lostm all of their personal property, and some were even stripped of their clothing and had their homes burned to the ground.26 In 1692, after the war was over, it was estimated that the material loss of Friends throughout the nation amounted to £100,000.
After the landing of William and Mary in England, James had fled to France, and now, with the hope of recovering his lost kingdom, he was come again with an army into Ireland. During the fierce struggle that ensued, the Provinces of Leinster and Munster were ravaged by advancing or retreating armies, and many Friends who continued in their homes were plundered and subjected to gross maltreatment; but not being classed as belligerents, their lives were generally spared. They were sometimes enabled, indeed, to perform kind offices for both sides, at one time pleading for their Irish neighbors, when the English had obtained the ascendency, and at another sheltering the Protestant English when the Irish had gained a temporary advantage.
After the defeat of James at the Boyne, in 1690, his Irish troops disbanded, and roamed through the country, carrying terror and devastation into the Protestant districts.27 William Edmundson, Sufferings now living at Rosinallis, was one of the greatest sufferers in this war. In reading his quaint and graphic account of his sufferings and experiences in these unhappy times one is filled with admiration for his courage and heroism. At one time he is at Dublin telling James of the calamities which have fallen upon the Protestants, and at another he risks his life in pleading with infuriated English soldiers for his Irish neighbors. He relates that after the Battle of Boyne, the Rapparees burst into his house one night, abused his wife with such violence and cruelty that she died soon after, and ruthlessly seized him and his two sons and carried them away with intent to hang them. This crime, undoubtedly, would have been committed if an Irish officer had not opportunely interfered.
In spite of all the trials and hardships so nobly endured in his foster land, and in spite of long and wearisome journeys in Europe and America, William Edmundson lived to the ripe old age of eighty-five, and on the Thirty-first day of the Sixth Month (O. S.), 1712. departed this life, well deserving the name. Father of Irish Quakerism.28
After William III. had brought the nation into a peaceful condition, the Friends continued to increase in numbers, and during the next half century many new meetings were formed. At the present day. although the Society has greatly decreased, there still remains a considerable number of meetings, many of which are well attended.

  1. William Edmundson was first married to Margaret Stanford, of Bramley, Derbyshire, daughter of Thomas Stanford. She died in 1691, at the house of her son-in-law, William Fayle, near Dublin, and William Edmundson was married a second time, 10 Mo. 1, 1697, to Mary Strangman, of Mountmellick Meeting.—Records in possesion of a descendant, Joshua William Edmunsdon, of Dublin.
  2. Journal, 1-6.
  3. Journal of William Edmundson, 1-15 Janney, I., 261-4.
  4. Besse, II., 457; Rutty, 87.
  5. Rutty, 88.
  6. Edmundson's Journal, 18.
  7. Edmundson' s Journal, 21.
  8. Rutty, 91.
  9. Ibid., 87-91; Edmundson, 16-29; Janny I, 256-270.
  10. Beck, 84.
  11. Edward Burrough in a letter to Margaret Fell, Barclay's Letters of Early Friends, 265.
  12. Rutty, 95.
  13. Among those convinced at Bandon at this time was Thomas Wight (1640-1724), son of Rice Wight, minister of the town of Bandon, and grandson of Thomas Wight, also minister of the same town and originally from Guilford, in Surrey, England. Thomas Wight is to be remembered as the first historian of the Irish Friends, having compiled an excellent contemporary "History of the Rise and Progress of the People called Quakers in Ireland," from 1653 to 1700. His manuscript was revised and carried down to the year 1751 by Dr. John Rutty (1699-1775), a Friend of Dublin, and a native of England, who published the work in Dublin, in 1751. (See Rutty in Bibliography.)
  14. Barclay, 268-9.
  15. Besse, II., 459.
  16. Rutty, 92-109, 351-363; Basse, II., 458-9; Backhouse, 51-3; Barclay, 260-273; Janney, I., 273-9.
  17. Janney, II., 13-I4, 25-6.
  18. Journal, 45.
  19. Froude, I., 171-2.
  20. Rutty, 367.
  21. Ibid., 120, 130.
  22. Rutty, 127; Janney, II., 170.
  23. Joyce in Traill, IV., 6:6; Lawless, 280-1; Janney, II., 320-1.
  24. Rutty, 156.
  25. See account of John Barcroft and other Friends in Leadbeater.
  26. Janny. II., 322.
  27. Janney, II., 323-4.
  28. Journal
  29. .
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