11
Margaret Fell
“I Shall Stand for God and Truth”
Rumors flew as the traveling preacher made his way over the craggy landscape toward Swarthmoor in northern England. Margaret Fell, mistress of Swarthmoor Hall, was eager to meet the man who was said to have founded a brand-new religion. Two days later, as George Fox stood on a pew in the parish church and preached, Margaret rose to her feet in amazement. Then, as Fox rebuked those who understood the Scriptures only for themselves, without the illumination of the Spirit of Christ, she sank back into the pew, crying bitterly. “This opened me so, that it cut me to the heart; and I saw clearly that we were all wrong,” Margaret wrote later. “I cried in my spirit to the Lord, ‘We are all thieves; we are all thieves; we have taken the Scriptures in words, and know nothing of them ourselves.’”1
That pivotal moment in the church pew was the beginning of a half-century of work for the Quaker Fellowship—work that would bring Margaret Fell to the royal court of King Charles II, as well as to the prison dungeons of Lancaster Gaol.
A People of Peace
Before she committed herself to the Quaker movement, Margaret needed to address an urgent domestic concern. Her husband, Judge Thomas Fell, had been traveling during Fox’s visit, and as he made his way home from London, he was intersected by the parish rector and several neighborhood friends, who warned him that his wife and children had been bewitched by a traveling preacher during his absence. Startled and angered by this disturbing accusation, Fell hurried home to Swarthmoor Hall to confront his wife. That night during dinner, with all seven children silently gathered around the table, Margaret described her conversion experience to her husband.
After Fell spoke with Fox himself, he was somewhat appeased, but not enough to abandon the Anglican Church. Instead, he allowed his wife to convert to Quakerism and to host the meetings in his home, although he would not attend. Two days later, the first Meeting of Friends took place at Swarthmoor Hall, a tradition that continued for nearly forty years.
Margaret was instrumental to the successful spread of Quakerism in its early years, despite the fact that she was tied to her home and family. In dozens of letters, essays, and pamphlets, some composed only a few months after her conversion, she illustrated clearly and convincingly the fundamental Quaker belief in the Light of Christ, which came to be known simply as the Inner Light. Quakers repudiated the sacraments, ordained clergy, and any outward form of religion, believing that they hindered the divine Inner Light. They believed that the work of the Holy Spirit in the faithful had even greater authority than Scripture itself, and during meetings, they would often sit in silence, waiting to speak until moved by the Holy Spirit. They also did not feel the same oppressive weight of sin in their lives as their spiritual cousins, the Puritans. While they knew that sin existed, of course, they focused more on the presence of the divine light and, as Fox stated it, “that of God in every man.”2 Fox preached that a state of “perfection” through Christ’s indwelling Spirit was possible for every believer.
Margaret also wrote about the issue of Quaker persecution, which was rampant in seventeenth-century England under the rule of both Oliver Cromwell and King Charles II. Thousands of Quakers were imprisoned for their refusal to take any oath whatsoever, which they viewed as directly opposed to Christ’s express prohibition in the Gospel of Matthew:
But I say, do not make any vows! Do not say, “By heaven!” because heaven is God’s throne. And do not say, “By the earth!” because the earth is his footstool. And do not say, “By Jerusalem!” for Jerusalem is the city of the great King. Do not even say, “By my head!” for you can’t turn one hair white or black. Just say a simple, “Yes, I will,” or “No, I won’t.” Anything beyond this is from the evil one. (Matt. 5:33–37)
In May of 1660 Margaret traveled with her oldest daughter to London to appeal to King Charles II for the release of Quaker prisoners, including Fox, who had been arrested at Swarthmoor Hall and incarcerated in Lancaster Castle. Initially she appealed to the king and his brothers, the dukes of York and Gloucester, via letters, in which she explained in detail why the Quakers refused to take oaths. She also wrote a paper entitled “A Declaration and an Information from Us the People of God Called Quakers,” which was delivered to the king. It was the first document to proclaim the Quakers’ belief in peace and their refusal to use weapons for any purpose:
We are a people that follow after those things that make for peace, love and unity; it is our desire that others’ feet may walk in the same, and [we] do deny and bear our testimony against all strife and wars and contentions. . . . Our weapons are not carnal but spiritual. . . . And so we desire, and also expect to have the liberty of our consciences and just rights and outward liberties, as other people of the nation.3
Margaret also met with King Charles II in person, often as frequently as three times in one week, relentlessly urging him to release the prisoners and making the case for the Quaker principles again and again. Finally, four months after her arrival in London, George Fox and several other prisoners were released.
“King of My Conscience”
The respite did not last long. While Margaret was still in London, a proclamation was passed prohibiting Quaker meetings and resulting in the imprisonment of more than four thousand Quakers over the span of a few weeks. Margaret’s second oldest child, Bridget, who was left in charge of the management of Swarthmoor and the younger siblings, wrote to her mother that forty-three Swarthmoor Friends had been arrested without warrant—some from their homes, others from the market or their workplaces. In some counties, not a single male Friend was left free.
Convinced that it was the Lord’s will for her to stay in London and petition for the release of the prisoners, Margaret soldiered on, faithfully penning letters to Charles II, the royal family, and his council. Finally, more than twenty letters and numerous in-person visits later, the king and his council released imprisoned Quakers and restored their liberty. Margaret finally returned to Swarthmoor, fifteen months after she’d left it in Bridget’s hands.
In 1663, Margaret, now the widowed mother of seven children, was arrested and brought to trial for holding Quaker meetings in her home. Four of her daughters stood in the courtroom, watching anxiously as the judge held out the Bible to their mother. Each time he asked her to take an oath, Margaret refused, finally acknowledging before the judge and the jury, “If you ask me never so often, I answer you that the reason why I cannot take it is because Christ hath commanded me not to swear at all; I owe my allegiance and obedience to him.”4 Exasperated, one of the justices called out, “Mistress Fell, you may with a good conscience (if you cannot take the oath) put in security, that you will have not more Meetings at your house.”5
When she adamantly refused to cease holding the Quaker Meetings in her home, the clerk held the Bible out to her a final time, urging her to remove her glove and place her hand on the cover. “I never took an oath in my life. I have spent my days thus far, and I never took an oath,” she replied. “I own allegiance to the King, as he is the King of England, but Christ Jesus is King of my conscience.”6
The courtroom grew quiet, and with her daughters watching from the benches behind her, the judge read Margaret’s sentence: life imprisonment and complete forfeiture of her property. She was terrified, not only for what awaited her behind bars but also for her children, who would now be without either parent. Yet she remained steady and hopeful in God, despite her dire circumstances. “Although I am out of the King’s Protection, yet I am not out of the protection of the Almighty God,” Margaret declared, before the judge ordered her removed from the courtroom.7
“For the Sake and Service of the Lord”
Margaret was imprisoned in Lancaster Castle for four years, from 1664 to 1668. Her small cell was exposed to England’s dank, rainy weather, and conditions were atrocious, but Margaret didn’t waste the ample time available to her. While in prison she continued to appeal to King Charles II, employing increasingly sharp admonitions to remind him of his broken promises. She also wrote several tracts in defense of Quaker principles, as well as four books, including her most famous, Women’s Speaking Justified, in which she defended the right of women to serve as public preachers. Garnering from Scripture the example of twenty-four biblical women to support her argument, she maintained that women who were in the Spirit could speak just as men did, for it was the Spirit, not the woman herself, who was speaking.
Just over a year after she was released from prison, Margaret married George Fox, eleven years after her first husband’s death. Much of their marriage was spent apart, as Fox spent most of his time preaching and converting in London, while Margaret focused on familial responsibilities and growing the Quaker Meetings at Swarthmoor. She entered into the union with her eyes wide open, aware that marriage to a traveling preacher would not be easy:
Though the Lord had provided a habitation for him, yet he was not willing to stay at it, because it was so remote and far from London where his service most lay. And my concern for God and his holy eternal truth was then in the north, where God had placed and set me; and likewise for the ordering and governing of my children and family; so that we were willing both of us to live apart for some years upon God’s account and his truth’s service, and to deny ourselves of that comfort which we might have had in being together, for the sake and service of the Lord and his truth.8
In fact, the couple was apart so often, Margaret saw her husband only once in the six months preceding his death in 1691. She received the news of Fox’s death by letter from London. “A prince had fallen today in Israel,” wrote fellow Quaker and longtime friend William Penn.9
Distance wasn’t the only difficulty associated with Margaret’s second marriage. Her only son, George, had deeply opposed the union. He was adamantly against Quakerism and resented George Fox for converting his mother. He had suffered bitterly during her long imprisonment in Lancaster, and his hostility increased after he married and became a father himself—so much, in fact, that he was instrumental in his mother’s second imprisonment in Lancaster Castle. George accused his mother of breaking the Conventicle Act of 1664, which forbade religious meetings comprised of five or more people outside the auspices of the Church of England. As the result of her only son’s vicious accusations, Margaret spent 1670 to 1671 imprisoned once again.
For God and Truth Till the End
In her eighty-eight years, Margaret Fell never put herself, nor anyone else, before her God. Not a single person ever swayed her from her service and loyalty to the Lord—not a judge nor a jury; not the king nor his council; not even her own children, who watched their mother led to prison twice for her refusal to compromise her beliefs. Still writing just five months before her death in 1702, Margaret renewed her commitment to the Religious Society of Friends and to God. “I give this my testimony, while I breathe upon the earth,” she wrote, “that I shall stand for God and Truth.”10 From the moment she rose to her feet in church until the moment she breathed her last, Margaret Fell remained faithful to the tenets of Quakerism. She had indeed stood strong and resiliently “for God and Truth.”