(Part Three - Footnotes)
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(2) J.R. Green, History, (Illustrated Edition), p. 1612.
(3) See quotations from early Evangelical writers in Liberal Evangelicalism, pp. 11-13.
(4) Thomas Clarkson, in his Portraiture of the Society of Friends (1805), has an interesting passage in which he notes that many more women Friends were disowned for "marrying out." This he attributes to the higher moral and spiritual quality of the women in the Society as compared with that prevailing outside its borders. Men Friends had little difficulty in finding suitable partners within their own ranks, while non-Friends were drawn to marry women Quakers for their superior virtue and good sense! (Clarkson, Portraiture, one volume edition, p. 115.)
(5) There is a story which so far as I know is not to be found in print, but which I believe to be well-founded, that when George IV. was on his deathbed in 1830 a State carriage appeared at Devonshire House at the time of London Yearly Meeting and an emissary from the Court sent for Elizabeth Fry to ask that Thomas Shillitoe might be sent to him. The one cry of the dying king was "Send for the old Quaker."
(6) That Thomas Shillitoe's deepest convictions were not really of the kind called Evangelical is indicated by a reply he sent in 1827 to some Canadian Indians he had visited and who were perplexed by his having spoken of the Bible as "the holy book." He wrote, in opposition to the teaching they had received from a certain missionary, "I now declare that so far from my believing Scriptures the be the only means of salvation, and sole rule for our conduct, I am decidedly opposed to such dangerous and false opinions. I consider them to be the writings of holy men in former ages who were inspired by the Great Spirit. But I consider such as tell you they are the only rule or means of salvation to be under the influence of a wrong spirit; for, if we are to believe such sentiments as these, what must become of our fellow-creatures before the Scriptures were in existence?" (Journal, Vol. II., p. 214.)
(7) Both in the Journal (which is a very full one) and in the printed Sermons, the phrases dear to the hears of Evangelicals are hardly to be found at all.
(8) The last years of the eighteenth century seem to have been marked by a general revival of interest in religion in many parts of the country. I am informed that in the Huddersfield district of Yorkshire in the period of 1780-1810 seven or eight Independent Chapels were founded. These sprang up of themselves without outside stimulation, and were due in large measure to the religious awakening caused by the ministry of Henry Venn at the Parish Church. He was one of the most fervent preachers of the new Evangelicalism (see R.M. Jones, Later Periods, Vol I., p. 272. I am not sure whether his views were Calvinistic or Arminian; but the newly-formed Nonconformist bodies to which I have alluded are said to have been all strongly Calvinistic. There would seem to have been many "seekers" at that time who were not satisfied either with Anglicanism or with the Calvinism of most of the Non-conformist sects (except the Methodists.)
(9) I have looked through the five bulky volumes of the Life of Wilburforce, but cannot find that he himself came into any close relations with Friends until he made the acquaintance of J.J. Gurney in 1816. The only Friends frequently mentioned (after this time) are J.J.G., Elizabeth Fry, and William Allen. In 1826 W.W. records that J.J.G. took him and some others to a Friend's meeting, apparently at Bath, where he says J.J.G. spoke for an hour ("it appeared rambling,a nd left no deposit, only impression") and prayed twice. "We all came away thankful that we were not Quakers" (Vol. V., pp. 269,270.)
(10) "Conservative forces instinctively combined. It was vaguely known that strange religious opinions were abroad in Europe, but as revolution was also at large on the Continent, it was highly probably that both were hatched from the same egg, and neither was wanted in England, especially as the former might be the forerunner of the latter." (Liberal Evangelicalism, pp. 17, 18.)
(11) A full account of these events, by a sympathiser, will be found in A Narrative of Events in Ireland, by W. Rathbone. For a summary see The British Friend, December, 1902, p. 313.
(12) See The British Friend, October, 1902, pp. 257-260.
(13) We would gladly know more of Deborah Darby and her work, but no memoir of her appears to have been written. She travelled extensively in the ministry, and meeting Elizabeth Gurney not long after the change had begun in here through the preaching of W. Savery, prophesied of her that she would be "a light to the blind, speech to the dumb, and feet to the lame" - to the young girl's great astonishment. (Elizabeth Fry, by G.K. Lewis, p. 30.
(A) Not having seen the Epistle, I cannot say whether it is as described by Grubb or not. As always, I recommend a certain amount of caution when dealing with generalizations about unquoted material.
(B) Undocumented claims.
(C) Undocumented.
(D) As do I. I observe that selections from William Savery were republished in both the Orthodox Friends' Library and the Hicksite Friends' Miscellany.
(E) Also an ancestor of his; the Tuke and Grubb families were related through marriage.
(F) Elias Hicks records several instances of a (male) Orthodox minister from abroad disrupting his meetings. As seems to have been typical in these kinds of cases, he does not, however, give a name. (John Wilbur, in his vitriolic letter "On the Separation in America" never once mentions Hicks by name.) I think Grubb may be a little overly harsh in this section, and we need to take into account that the antagonisms - many of them quite unrelated to doctrine, as far as I can see - ran very deep.
In general I think the article above is well worth reading and is a good historical sketch of what the Society had become by the time of the Evangelical movements, and how Evangelicalism entered the Society and the impacts that it made, for both good and not so good. I do think the critical and objective reader has to notice, though, that Grubb shows some fairly obvious bias against the Evangelicals, and there are several points at which his documentation is very weak or nonexistent. For example, he writes much about what Joseph John Gurney supposedly wrote and believed, but nowhere does his give any actual quotations from Gurney or cite any references. Nor does Grubb substantiate his own conclusions about the universality vs. particularity of the light or address whether it had changed over time before Gurney ever arrived. One of my next projects, I feel, has to be to put on the actual relevant chapters from my copy of Gurney's Observations so that people can read what he said instead of what someone else said he said, and compare the two.