“Conscience and Convention: the Young Furly and the ‘Hat Controversy,’” in SARAH HUTTON...

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STEFANO VILLANI CONSCIENCE AND CONVENTION: THE YOUNG FURLY AND THE HAT CONTROVERSY Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth, often die before us: and our minds repre- sent to us those tombs to which we are approach- ing; where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away. ( John Locke) 1 John Perrot In August 1661 London Quaker community was thrown into turmoil by the arrival of the Irish Quaker, John Perrot, who had survived three years’ imprisonment in Rome. To- gether with his companion John Luffe, he had gone to Rome in June 1658, with the aim of propagating the creed of the in- ner Light in Italy and possibly with the hope of converting the Pope. As soon as the two arrived in Rome, they asked in vain for an audience with Alexander VII and were arrested by the Inquisition. Detained at first in the prisons of the Inquisi- 1 JOHN LOCKE, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, X, 5. I wish to thank Mario Caricchio, Camilla Hermanin, Elsa Luttazzi and Mario Rosa for their help. My greatest gratitude goes to Prof. Antonio Rotondò who asked me to contribute this essay and to Prof. Sarah Hutton who accepted it for pub- lication. I am very grateful also for their most useful comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to Josef Keith (Library of the Society of Friends) for his help in answering my enquiries. 87

Transcript of “Conscience and Convention: the Young Furly and the ‘Hat Controversy,’” in SARAH HUTTON...

STEFANO VILLANI

CONSCIENCE AND CONVENTION:THE YOUNG FURLY AND THE

HAT CONTROVERSY

Thus the ideas, as well as children, of ouryouth, often die before us: and our minds repre-sent to us those tombs to which we are approach-ing; where, though the brass and marble remain,yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and theimagery moulders away.

( John Locke) 1

John Perrot

In August 1661 London Quaker community was throwninto turmoil by the arrival of the Irish Quaker, John Perrot,who had survived three years’ imprisonment in Rome. To-gether with his companion John Luffe, he had gone to Romein June 1658, with the aim of propagating the creed of the in-ner Light in Italy and possibly with the hope of convertingthe Pope. As soon as the two arrived in Rome, they asked invain for an audience with Alexander VII and were arrested bythe Inquisition. Detained at first in the prisons of the Inquisi-

1 JOHN LOCKE, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, X, 5. I wish tothank Mario Caricchio, Camilla Hermanin, Elsa Luttazzi and Mario Rosa fortheir help. My greatest gratitude goes to Prof. Antonio Rotondò who askedme to contribute this essay and to Prof. Sarah Hutton who accepted it for pub-lication. I am very grateful also for their most useful comments and suggestions.I am also grateful to Josef Keith (Library of the Society of Friends) for his helpin answering my enquiries.

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tion, they were then locked up in the lunatic asylum of SaintMaria della Pietà or the Pazzarelli. There of Luffe died, per-haps as a consequence of a hunger strike. Perrot, however, re-mained there until June 1661. The news of his and his com-panion’s arrest and detention, and of the death Luffe, circulat-ed widely in England, not just within the Quaker communi-ty. In order to obtain the liberation of Perrot in the spring of1661, two other Quakers, one of French origin, went toRome and, after having been arrested, were freed togetherwith Perrot after a few weeks of detention, perhaps thanks tothe good offices of King Charles II.2

During his long imprisonment, Perrot was able to sendhis writings to England, many of which were published,while others circulated in manuscript form. One of these doc-uments fuelled many discussions among the English Quakersand brought about a deep division in the movement. Thiswas a letter in which he asserted the lawfulness for Quakermen to keep the hat on their head during prayer. Quakermen in fact used to pray with uncovered heads during wor-ship while the women had to remain veiled.3 To consider theinnovation proposed by Perrot a secondary issue would be anerror of perspective: as a matter of fact, one should not forgetthat, at that time, clothing carried enormous symbolic impor-tance in both the religious and civil sphere, an importance,moreover, that to a certain extent it bears even in the secularEurope of today, as, to use only one example, the recent con-troversies over the chador demonstrate. Undeniably, to praywith head uncovered was to conform to all Christian tradi-

2 On Perrot cf. KENNETH L. CARROLL, John Perrot, Early Quaker Schismatic,London, 1971 (Supplement to the «Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society»,XXXIII); STEFANO VILLANI, Tremolanti e Papisti. Missioni quacchere nell’Italia delSeicento, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1996; IDEM, I quaccheri contro ilPapa. Alcuni pamphlet inglesi del ’600 tra menzogne e verità, «Studi Secenteschi»,XXXVIII, 1998, pp. 165-202.

3 If any friend be moved, manuscript copy in Library of the Society ofFriends, London, Crosse MS, c. 12; cf. KENNETH L. CARROLL, John Perrot cit., p.45. This letter had been published in 1663 by William Salt during the follow-ing controversies in Some Breathings of Life, from a Naked Heart, 1662, p. 15.

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tion and to Scripture. Similarly, the Quakers’ categorical re-fusal to remove their hats as a form of greeting (a gesture witha strong and immediate egalitarian and anti-hierarchical im-port), was justified theologically by asserting that this habitwas idolatrous: you had to remove your hat, as sign of re-spect, only before God, not men.

But it is undeniable that the violence of the divisions pro-voked by Perrot’s proposal, is astonishing, considering aboveall that Quakers, on the basis of the enthusiastical theology ofthe Light within, never troubled themselves to challenge ritu-als and beliefs of the Christian tradition always consideredfundamental. It is enough to think, for example, of the com-plete abolition of all the sacraments, baptism and Eucharistcomprised. Perrot, moreover, did not consider replacing theobligation of taking off the hat during prayer (something nev-er called in question before him), with the obligation to keepit on. He limited himself to considering this as a possibility forsomeone who did not want to remove his hat if moved bythe spirit.4

Why then did Perrot’s document provoke, as we will see,such a strong dissent from the leaders of the movement? Inorder to answer this question, it is necessary to reconstruct thecontext in which the controversy started. Some years earlierthe Quaker movement had been shaken by the vicissitudes ofJames Nayler. As it is well known, he was one of the mostprominent and famous Quaker leaders, and in autumn 1656he entered Bristol on a horse, in a personal replay of the entryof Jesus into Jerusalem. He was preceded by women whoscreamed «Hosanna» and celebrated him as a new Christ.Nayler was arrested and taken to London, where he was triedby a parliamentary committee, flagellated publicly and had hisforehead marked with B for Blasphemy. He was then takenback to Bristol where he was whipped again and, in a sort of

4 On the schism cf. KENNETH L. CARROLL, John Perrot. Also useful, CLARE J.L. MARTIN, Controversy and Division in Post-Restoration Quakerism: the Hat,Wilkinson-Story and Keithian controversies and comparisons with the internal divisions ofother seventeenth-century nonconformist groups, Thesis (PhD), Open University, 2003.

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counter ritual to the previous «triumph», was forced to ridethe streets of the town on a horse with his face backwards.After these events, Nayler was brought back to London,where he was imprisoned. Released in autumn 1659, severelyweakened by the experience of detention, he died a year later,at the age of forty-three.5

The Nayler episode also showed up a disagreement with-in the leadership of the movement. The «ranterist» wing ofthe Quakers who gathered round the charismatic figure ofNayler lived with increasing uneasiness under the centraliza-tion of the movement in progress and the unique leadershipof George Fox. As a consequence of this episode, the Quakermovement began to rethink its organizational structure in anattempt to marginalise the eccentric excesses of its less con-trollable members. In the controversies between the support-ers of Fox and those of Nayler, the latter went as far as nottaking off their hat when the former prayed or preached, inorder to show that they thought that their prayers andpreaching were exclusively worldly and not inspired.

With the Restoration and with the persecutions that fol-lowed the Fifth Monarchists uprising of January 1661, it be-came necessary for the Quaker leadership to oppose more de-cidedly the eccentricities and the extravagances of the Quak-ers, like that of wanting to stay with heads covered duringprayer. On the other hand, the people who asserted the possi-bility of keeping their hats on their heads, made it just withthe explicit attempt of asserting the complete and absolutefreedom of those who felt inspired to follow the dictates ofthe Spirit without any restriction. The issue, moreover, di-rectly concerned the role of women in a movement in whichin its earliest years women played an extraordinary leading

5 On Nayler cf. LEO DAMROSCH, The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus: JamesNayler and the Puritan Crackdown on the Free Spirit, Harvard University Press,1996. Important for understanding Nayler’s theological positions, GEOFFREY F.NUTTALL, James Nayler. A Fresh Approach, «Friends Historical Journal», Supple-ment 26, 1954. Cf. also GEOFFREY F. NUTTALL, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faithand Experience. With a new Foreword by Peter Lake, The University of ChicagoPress, 1992.

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role. In fact the process of re-organization tried to limit femi-nine preaching activity, relegating the women to assistingpoor or imprisoned Quakers. Thus the egalitarian practice ofmen keeping their hats on like women did, had in a certainflavour of opposition to such a process.

Besides these theological and organizational reasons, therewas also the re-emerging of the issue of leadership. Perrot,who had been an important Quaker missionary in Ireland andin England before the mission in Italy, returned to Londonwith the prestige of having defied the Antichrist in his see andwith the aura of martyrdom acquired from his imprisonment.He himself had a high conception of his person and apparent-ly, since his return to London, demonstrated that he wouldnot accept subordination to Fox and his entourage that nowcharacterized the Quakers. From Fox’s perspective, he sawthe phantom of Nayler reappearing as Perrot and a challengeto his leading role. Fox’s fears were increased by the fact that,even before the arrival of Perrot in England, the old support-ers of Nayler had shared his views. The bitterness that straightaway characterized the hat controversy was born therefore inthis context.

An indication of how much Fox feared the prestige ofPerrot, was the accent on some elements intended to under-mine his reputation in his first answers to the document thatthe latter had sent from Rome. Perrot, in fact, was accused,certainly not wrongly, of having wasted an enormous amountof money during his imprisonment in order to send his docu-ments to England and in order to have them published. Hewas attacked, moreover, from a theological point of view forhaving spread erroneous, not to say ridiculous and eccentricviews.6

On his arrival in London, Perrot had a series of painfulencounters with George Fox and the other leaders of themovement in which they confirmed such accusations. Perrot,on the contrary, reconfirmed his position with a document(that was published in the course of the same year 1661) in

6 Cf. KENNETH L. CARROLL, John Perrot cit., passim.

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which he asserted explicitly that it was not necessary to takeoff ones hat.7 In the autumn, Perrot left London and went tothe eastern counties. And it was almost certainly during thismissionary travel in the East Anglia that Perrot gathered aroundhimself a group of dissidents, among them Edmund Crosse andBenjamin Furly, who had been living for some years in Hol-land but were probably in England at that time.8 At the end ofDecember 1661, Perrot went to Ireland, where he did not re-main for long. Already in the spring of 1662, he returned toLondon and in June was arrested and taken to Newgate. Heagreed to being released on the condition that he went into ex-ile. Before his departure for Barbados he published a new pam-phlet entitled An Epistle for Unity (probably in July 1662). Thiswas a true declaration of war against Fox and his supporters inwhich Perrot appealed to the Presbyterians, Independents,Baptists, and Seekers, invoking a sort of mystical union amongdifferent religious confessions explicitly affirming a closer bondwith many of them than to many of those that were calledQuakers.9 For this reason, before he left England, Perrot wasformally expelled from the movement.10

7 «I would not that the true Israel of God should be ignorant how that thepurpose of God is to bring to naught all the customary, traditional ways of wor-ship of the sons of men, which have entered into the world and stand unto thisday in the curse and state of apostasy from the true power of the living worship.For which cause I preach the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ unto that reasoningpart in all which seems to stand in opposition to that which I have received byexpress commandment from the Lord God of heaven in the day of my captivityin Rome, viz., to bear a sure testimony against the custom and tradition of tak-ing off the had by men when they go to pray God, which they never had bycommandment from God, and therefore unto them may be righteously said,Who hath required this thing at your hands» (Library of the Religious Society ofFriends, London, Swarthmore MSS 5/17 [Trans. VII pp. 85]); see WILLIAM C.BRAITHWAITE, The Second Period of Quakerism, York, William Sessions Ltd, 1979(reprint of the 1961 edition), pp. 232-233. Cf. the Single Sheet published in 1661that includes both this letter by Perrot and a letter by Henry Clarke that startswith «To all who stand in opposition» (apparently there is only one copy of thiswork, Oxford, Bodleian Library, shelfmark: Johnson.a.57/7).

8 KENNETH L. CARROLL, John Perrot cit., p. 49.9 Ibid., pp. 56-59, 62, 63; WILLIAM C. BRAITHWAITE, The Second Period of

Quakerism cit., p. 234.10 KENNETH L. CARROLL, John Perrot cit., pp. 65-66.

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The «excommunication» of Perrot started a veritable warof paper with the publication of numerous pro-Perrot writ-ings to which the most important Quakers replied.11 Therewas a resumption of the controversy in 1665 when a letter ofPerrot circulated in England. This received a sour answerfrom Richard Farnworth, who published Truth Vindicated inthe same year.12 But Perrot almost certainly did not read Farn-worth’s harsh attack, because he died in September 1665.

A little later, in May 1666, an assembly held in London,issued a document entitled A Testimony from the Brethrenwhich imposed a strict organization on the movement articu-lated in six points. A true turning point in the history ofQuakerism, this document was signed, among others, byFarnworth and George Whitehead.13

11 In 1663, to support Fox’s position, WILLIAM BAILY published The LambsGovernment, EDWARD BURROUGH, Two General Epistles, JOSIAH COALE, A Saluta-tion to the Suffering-Seed of God, WILLIAM DEWSBURY, The Breathings of Life, RE-BECKAH TRAVERS, A Testimony (this text is very significant because came from aformer supporter of Nayler). On the Perrottian William Salt published Somebreathings of life from and John Harwood To all people that profess the eternal truth ofthe living God this is a true and real demonstration of the cause why I have denied anddo deny the authority of George Fox. To the latter most violent text replied thesame George Fox with The Spirit of Envy, Lying, and Persecution, made Manifest.Cf. also KENNETH L. CARROLL, John Perrot cit., p. 76.

12 R. F., Truth vindicated. Or, An answer to a letter sent from John Perrot out ofJamaica into England, &c. Answer to a letter sent from John Perrot out of Jamaica intoEngland, &c, London, 1665.

13 On the importance of this document cf. ROSEMARY MOORE, The Lightin Their Consciences: Early Quakers in Britain 1646-1666, University Park, Penn-sylvania State University Press, 2000, p. 224. In 1666 London was destroyed bythe Great Fire. Robert Rich, the Quaker who had been the closest to Naylerduring his misfortunes following his entry in Bristol, and who then sympa-thized with Perrot, organized a collection of money to give economic help tothe «seven Churches» damaged by the catastrophe that had destroyed the majorpart of London. The seven Churches were the Catholic Church, the Churchof England, the Presbyterians, the Independents, the Baptists, the Quakers andthe mysterious «Church of the First-Born». The Quakers refused the offer andRich in 1669 published a pamphlet which described Perrot’s adventure andhis conflict with Fox. Mr. Robert Rich his second letters from Barbadoes writ uponthe occasion of the Quakers prevarication in the matter of the 30 l. sent to them in com-mon with their brethren the other six churches so termed by him. With a preface extortedfrom R.B. phil. to the said people, London: Printed for the author, in the year

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In 1673, the hat controversy re-ignited briefly, with thepublication of the anonymous The Spirit of the Hat, in which,in the name of the freedom of the Spirit, Fox and the «Foxo-nian-unity» were violently attacked.14 William Penn replied tothis harsh attack with The Spirit of Alexander.15 He was in histurn opposed by another anonymous text entitled Tyranny andHypocrisy.16 It did not take long for a riposte. Once again itwas William Penn who replied with the publication of Judasand the Jews (a long pamphlet of 131 pages) that challengedthe accusations launched against Fox point by point.17 The

MDCLXIX. [1669]. As GEOFFREY NUTTALL pointed out in The Last of JamesNayler, Robert Rich and the Church of the First Born («Friends’ Quarterly», LX,1985, pp. 527-534) Rich’s letters and the circumstances in which they were is-sued show that the survivors among the people who were the closest to Naylerkept relations among themselves in connection with people who supportedPerrot. On the other hand Rich considered Perrot’s An Epistle for Unity notonly a continuation of the original spirit of the Quakers that Nayler had ex-pressed in his Love to the Lost of 1656, but also the expression of the positions ofthe mysterious «Church of the First-Born», the Church that is not a Church. Itis highly significant that Rich, considered Saltmarsh the founder of this religionof the spirit. I thank Mario Caricchio for having suggested these considerationson Rich. On this see also MARIO CARICCHIO, Politica, religione e commercio di librinella rivoluzione inglese. Gli autori di Giles Calvert, Genova, 2003 and IDEM, GilesCalvert, John Saltmarsh e la costruzione del profeta rivoluzionario nella Rivoluzione in-glese, «Rivista Storica Italiana», CXV, 2003, pp. 57-111, n. 1.

14 ANON., The Spirit of the Hat: or, the government of the Quakers among them-selves, as it hath been exercised of late years by George Fox and other leading-men, intheir Monday, or second-dayes meeting at Devonshire-House, brought to light. In a be-moaning letter of a certain ingenious Quaker to another his friend, wherein their tyranni-cal ... practises are detected, by G. I., F. Smith, London, 1673.

15 WILLIAM PENN, The Spirit of Alexander the Copper-Smith justly rebuk’d: oran answer to a late pamphlet, intituled, The Spirit of the Hat or the Government of theQuakers. ... By W(illiam) P(enn). To which are added the testimonies of those personswhose names are chiefly quoted by the author of that pamphlet, [London], 1673.

16 ANON., Tyranny and Hypocrisy Detected: or, a further discovery of the tyran-nical Government ... of the now-leading Quakers, being a defence of the letter, intituled,The Spirit of the Hat, against the deceitful ... answer called The Spirit of Alexander,etc. With a challenge. ... Also many of their ... papers ..., wherein they ... attribute titlesto George Fox, that are only proper to Christ, London, 1673.

17 WILLIAM PENN, Judas and the Jews combined against Christ and his followers:being a rejoynder to the late nameless reply called Tyranny and Hypocrisie detected,made against a book entitled the Spirit of Alexander the Coppersmith rebuked, etc.,

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year 1674 opened with the publication of a broadside signifi-cantly entitled Liberty of conscience asserted against imposition, byWilliam Mucklow, one of the people who, as Penn said, hadbeen involved in the anonymous attacks on Fox and his sup-porters. This attacked the positions of Fox in a long series ofrhetorical questions.18 George Whitehead replied immediatelyto the broadside with The Apostate Incendiary Rebucked.19 Theacrimony, recriminations and resentment of this controversyof 1673-1674 shows how the wound opened by Perrot stillbled, even if by now his supporters, marginalised and isolatedby the main Quaker movement, did not represent muchmore than a nuisance for George Fox and his supporters.20

Furly and the Hat Controversy (1662-1663)

As we have seen, among the first supporters of Perrot wasBenjamin Furly who, from 1659 lived in Rotterdam, but

which was an answer to a pamphlet called The Spirit of the Hat. ... To which areadded, several testimonies of persons concerned, [London], 1673.

18 WILLIAM MUCKLOW, Liberty of conscience asserted against imposition proposedin several sober queries to those of the people called Quakers who have assumed such anauthority contrary to their former testimonies, as also unto those that have submitted untoit before they found convictions in themselves, for them to weigh and consider in the bal-lance of true judgment, London, 1673/4.

19 GEORGE WHITEHEAD, The apostate incendiary rebuked, and the people calledQuakers vindicated from Romish hirarchy and imposition in a serious examination ofVVilliam Mucklows Liberty of conscience asserted against imposition, but proved a liber-ty which is in Christ Jesus, and against unity and order in his church by one whose re-joycing is the testimony of a good conscience toward God and man, G. Whitehead.,[London, s.n.], 1673.

20 From Barbados where he lived, ROBERT RICH tried to stir the contro-versy again in 1678 with the publication in Hidden things brought to light: or thediscord of the grand Quakers among themselves, of letters by Nayler and Perrot toattack the Fox’s authoritarianism. Soon after, in September 1679, Robert Richreturned in England, but he died in London two months after his arrival. Cf.also Something in Answer to a Book Printed in 1678 Called, The Hidden thingsbrought to light. With Robert Rich of Barbadoes his Name to it; and printed for FrancisSmith, s.l., 1679. Writings by Rich continued to be published after his death byJohn Pennyman, a Quaker that a few years before had been formally expelledby the movement. On Pennyman, see LESLEY H. HIGGINS, The ApostatizedApostle, John Pennyman: Heresy and Community in Seveteenth Century Quakerism,«Quaker History», LXIX, 1980, pp. 102-118.

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who, in all probability, was in England when John Perrot en-tered into a collision course with leading Quakers.21 Furly,then twenty-five years old, sided decisively with Perrot. In1662, just when the hat controversies were at their height,Furly published a pamphlet in Dutch entitled De eere deswerelds ontdeck, a firm defence of the Quakers custom of notdoffing their hat to their superiors in the social hierarchy.This was one of the distinguishing features of the Quakers.And it was this, together with the custom of addressing ev-eryone as «thou», that was the first thing to be noted whensomeone encountered the Quakers for the first time. Just togive one example, in 1658, the governor of Leghorn, indicat-ed his astonishment when notifying the Grand Duke of thearrival of a group of Quakers in the city, among whom therewas the same Perrot: «they are people that speak very little,and only of spiritual things, use «thou» to everyone, and theydo not salute anyone, not even a prince, saying that salutingmen is an idolatrical principle» («son gente che parlanopochissimo, e solo di cose spirituali, danno del tu a ognuno, enon salutano alcuno quando fussi anco un principe, dicendoessere il saluto agl’huomini un principio d’idolatria»).22 TheQuakers were not the first to refuse to take off their hats infront of their superiors or to use a simple language with them(the «plain language»). The leveller John Lilburne in 1637 didnot remove his hat in front of the Star Chamber and the dig-gers, Everard and Winstanley, did not take of their hats infront of general Fairfax.23 According to John Locke, Benjamin

21 KENNETH L. CARROLL, John Perrot cit., p. 109. William Hull though thatFurly decided to back Perrot, under pressure from John Philley, cf. WILLIAM

HULL, Benjamin Furly and Quakerism in Rotterdam, Swarthmore, 1941 («Swarth-more College Monographs on Quaker History», V), p. 28.

22 STEFANO VILLANI, Tremolanti e Papisti cit.23 The XVI Century Lollard William Thorpe kept his hat on in front of

the authorities, as did the martyrs during the reign of Mary Tudor, the hereticsof Essex in 1584, William Hacket in 1591, John Traske in 1618, an oatmeal-maker before the High Commission in 1630, John Saltmarsh in 1647, andmany others. See JOHN LILBURNE, Legall Fundamentall Liberties, 1649, andCHRISTOPHER HILL, The World Turned Upside Down. Radical Ideas during the En-glish Revolution, London, Maurice Temple Smith Ltd, 1972, pp. 189, 29, 70, 248.

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Furly said that the first person to refuse systematically to takeoff the hat in the presence of his superiors and to use the«thou» had been John Saltmarsh, one of the most influentialchaplains of the parliamentarian army, who died in 1647.24

But it was with the Quakers that this egalitarian and anti-hier-archical behaviour became a sign of membership. Mary Pen-ington remembered that the first thing that she knew of theQuakers was the fact that they used the «thee» and the «thou»and that the first Quaker book that she had in her hands was atext that dealt with this issue, something that, at first sight,seemed to her absolutely ridiculous (it was perhaps The PureLanguage of the Spirit of Truth ... or Thee and Thou publishedby Farnworth in 1655).25 On the issue of «thou» and «thee»,George Fox and two polyglot Quakers, John Stubb and thesame Benjamin Furly, published an impressive and expensivevolume with the title of Battledoor for Teachers and Professors tolearn Singular and Plural; You to Many, and Thou to one (1660)which compared forms of courtesy in various ancient andmodern languages. In the same year George Fox publishedHere you may see what was the True Honour amongst the Jewes re-garding the «hat-honour», that the Quakers repudiated fromthe beginning of the movement.26

To devote an entire book to the issue of the illegitimacyof greeting someone by raising one’s hat, as Furly did in 1662,is undoubtedly indicative of the polemical significance of thedebate which originated with John Perrot’s innovation ofkeeping ones hat on during worship – even if the fact that itcontains no explicit references to the issue makes us think thatthe text could have been written before the explosion of sucha debate. It is more difficult to think that there was no ex-

24 GEOFFREY NUTTALL, Holy Spirit cit., p. 83.25 W. C. BRAITHWAITE, The Beginnings of Quakerism to 1660, York,

William Sessions Ltd, 1981 (reprint of 1955 edition), p. 496.26 In his Some Breathings of Life WILLIAM SALT included a poem by George

Fox the Younger that attacked the presumptuous persons. George Fox theYounger died in July 1661. It is probable that the «J. P.» who signed the letterto the reader in the George Fox the Younger’s Collected Works published in1662 was Perrot. Cf. R. MOORE, Light in Their Consciences cit., p. 198.

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plicit polemical and provocative significance in the decisionto publish the volume in an English edition by Robert Wil-son in 1663, at the time when the controversy against Perrot(who was by then excluded from the Quakers), reached itspeak.27 Furly’s text, with its display of erudition and quota-tions in several European languages (one of them Italian), wasaimed at showing that uncovering one’s head in front of oth-er men was the sign of impious idolatry that had to be reject-ed and that the Quakers had to behave as Mordecai who re-fused to bow in front of the wicked Haman (Esther 5.9). Fur-ly cited as evidence of the fact that no people or nation, withthe exception of the so-called Christians after the apostasy,had a similar custom. Significantly, he noted that the Jews didnot uncover their heads either when entering the synagoguesor in front of the magistrates, or to each other.28 The text waswholly pervaded by an energetic and powerful egalitarianawareness that denounced «the classist» character of this prac-tice.29 With sarcasm, he pointed out the absurdity of thinkingthat it was more respectful and honourable to greet someoneremoving a hat rather than a cloak, a glove or a shoe.30

Even if, as we have said, it is possible that the text hadbeen prepared before the emergence of divisions within theQuaker movement, it is certain that not a few of the argu-ments used by Furly in support of his ideas could also be usedin defence of the perrottian opinion of the legitimacy of malepreachers keeping their hats on. Moreover, the fact that thistext had been written by one of the most educated Quakers,who together with the same Fox had brought his erudition tobear on the related issue of the illegitimacy of the spokencourtesies, could only add authority to his arguments. TheQuaker community of the area around Woodbridge andColchester (Furly’s birthplace) was one where the influence ofPerrot was most strongly felt, thanks also to the indefatigable

27 BENJAMIN FURLY, The Worlds Honour cit., cf. infra.28 Ibid., pp. 17-18.29 Ibid., p. 21.30 Ibid., p. 15.

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labours of Edmond Crosse, who organized the dissent fromthe mainstream Quakers in those areas.31 One of the leadingpersonalities of the Quaker movement, George Whitehead,bitterly disputed with the dissidents of that area, particularlyCrosse and Furly. The latter probably already in the course of1662 drafted a long document in suppport of Perrot’s posi-tion, of which an undated manuscript copy is at present con-served in the Library of the Society of Friends of London in asmall notebook where Crosse copied numerous documents ofPerrot and his supporters.32 In this manuscript, Furly assertedthat the issue of the hat was of no importance for salvation,or, to use his words, for «the union with God» or unityamong the Friends themselves. In fact the purity of Adam be-fore the fall and that of Christ himself cancelled out the out-ward differences in dress. In Christ there was no differencebetween man and woman and Christ was the mystical head ofthe man, male and female, and therefore when in the Scrip-ture stipulated that women should remain covered, this didnot mean the outward woman but the inner one. Faith gavefreedom from every outward rule and so the willingness toimpose rules about what could be drunk, eaten or about thetimes, the places, dress, the gestures and actions in the wor-ship of God, was superstitious and «carnal». It was impiousand superstitious therefore to think that God could consider aman who preached with hat on his head more lacking in re-spect than a woman who did so veiled. It was the opponentsof Perrot, therfore, who created divisions, wanting to imposerules on non-fundamental issues. The present divisions re-called those already experienced by the first apostles of Christ,when it was asked whether the heathens who converted toChristianity had to subject themselves to the Law of Moses(Acts 15, 20,29) and when Paul contrasted Peter openly in theletter to the foolish Galatians.

These were the arguments of Furly in vindication of the

31 Cf. STANLEY HENRY GLASS TITCH, Colchester Quakers, 1962.32 London, Library of the Society of Friends, London, Crosse MSS, 22-

25; cf. also W. I. HULL, Benjamin Furly cit., pp. 13-14. See below pp. 173-183.

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freedom of the Spirit from the outward constrictions. In sup-port of his ideas, Furly quoted The Breathings of True Lovepublished in 1660 by George Fox the Younger, one of themost powerful (and extremist) Quaker preachers who hadbeen in correspondence with Perrot and died in July 1661 be-fore the divisions. Furly then considered two texts of GeorgeFox in defence of the Quaker practice of refusing to take offthe hat, the pamphlet already cited before Here you may seewhat was the True Honour amongst the Jewes of 1660 and a textwritten six or seven years before (and therefore around 1655)in which, answering a series of questions made to him by aDutchman, the same Fox quoted the letter to the Galatiansreferring to the issue of the hat. The letter then contained ashort polemical passage against George Whitehead. Probablyin reply to this document, George Fox wrote a letter inwhich, with prophetical and moved language, rich with scrip-tural references, invited Furly to repent and to stop fomentingdivisions.33 George Whitehead, who had been directly calledin because of the document, replied with a document, whichhas not, apparently, been conserved. This pushed Furly towrite a new and articulate document from Holland in whichhe asserted again that it was without a strong foundation todo something only because it was done in that way for manyyears and that no form of worship could be said to be true orjust apart from those made with the guidance, the govern-ment and the motion of the Spirit.34 And it is apparently tothis letter that Whitehead referred in the November of 1663,when he complained that Furly had written perverse and in-jurious writings against him.35

In the spring of 1663 William Caton was sent by Fox toRotterdam in order to try to recompose the divisions, but at

33 London, Library of the Society of Friends, London, Swarthmore MSS7/107 [Trans. VI. 409]; Annual Catalogue, W. I. HULL, Benjamin Furly, pp. 16-17.

34 [FURLY], Tyranny and hypocrisy detected, pp. 67-71.35 On 9 November 1663 George Whitehead wrote to Fox complaining

about the Furly’s behaviour, Library of the Society of Friends, London, Swarth-more MSS 4/95 [Trans. IV. 12]; KENNETH L. CARROLL, John Perrot cit., p. 86.

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the moment of the prayer only a couple of persons wanted totake off their hats. Other attempts were made by StephenCrisp and, in the autumn of 1663, by John Higgins.36 As wehave already seen, in England the controversies reached apeak in 1663. In the following years, the conflicts betweenthe followers of Perrot and those of the majority continuedbut perhaps because of the persecutions of the Restorationgovernment, progressively some of the dissidents joined themajority position and among the supporters of Perrot thereremained only the more extremist elements.

In Holland, these were years of war and plague (the sec-ond Anglo-Dutch war started in 1665 and ended with thepeace of Breda, signed the 31st of July 1667). The DutchQuaker movement lived through a period of crisis, to whichthe rifts caused by the hat controversy probably contributed.In Holland a true schism did not happen and Furly, althoughin conflict with the English Quaker leaders, continued toconsider himself in communion with those whom he had at-tacked bitterly. In 1663, in the middle of the hat controversiesin England, Robert Wilson published The Light upon the Can-dlestick, Furly’s famous English translation of the Latin Lucer-na super Candelabrum, the Collegiant pamphlet probably at-tributable to Peter Balling.37 In 1664, Furly wrote a postscriptof a few pages to a Dutch pamphlet written by WilliamCaton.38 And another little work by him was published in

36 W. I. HULL, Benjamin Furly cit., pp. 18-19.37 [PETER BALLING], The Light upon the Candlestick. Serving for Observation of

the Principal things in the Book called, The Mystery of the Kingdom of God, &c.Against several Professors, Treated of, and written by Will Ames. Printed in LowDutch for the Author, 1662, and translated into English by B. F.

38 WILLIAM CATON, Eine Beschirmung d’Unschüldigen wider die Lästermäuler.Oder Eine kurtze Antwort auf fünff schändliche Bücher, außgegeben wider das VolckQuäker genannt. Das I. durch Christianum Pauli zu Dantzig, genant Augensalbe.Das 2. durch Johan Berckenthal, Krancken-tröster zu Hamburg, genant Der QuaekerHertzen-grund. Das 3. durch einen andern, dessen Name verschwiegen ist, (gedruckt zuHamburg), genant Der Quaker Quackeley. Das 4. ein anders, auch ohne den Namendes Authoris, genant Der Quaker Natur und Eigenschafft. Das 5. noch ein anders,durch Benedict Figken zu Dantzig, genant Der Alte Anabaptist, und der Newe Qua-ker. Darin die Sache der Unschuldigen außgeführet wider die Lügen, Verleumbdungen

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1666.39 We do not have further information about Furly’s in-terventions in the hat controversy. He returned explicitly onthe issue in 1669, writing a recantation of the positions thathe had supported. In this document he made explicit refer-ence to the 1663 documents and in particular to the letterswhich at that time he had written to George Fox and GeorgeWhitehead (the fact that he makes mention only of these doc-uments, which appeared six years earlier, would seem to con-firm the hypothesis that Furly not dealt with this issue againsince then). Furly asked the people who had copies of his let-ters to destroy them and not to circulate them. The docu-ment concluded by saying that if, in spite of what he was ask-ing now, anyone continued to circulate these documents,they alone would bear the blame. That his fears were justifiedis demonstrated by the fact that the long document that hehad written from Holland in answer to Whitehead was actu-ally published in 1673 at the end of the anonymous Tyrannyand Hypocrisy.40

The years that followed saw Furly in an eminent position

und falsche Beschuldigungen der Authoren vorgemelter Bücher, zu dem Ende, daß dieWahrheit möge offenbar, Gott allein geehret, die Unschuld seines Volcks dargethan, unddie Einfältigen recht unterrichtet werden, Amsterdam, 1664.

39 [FURLY], Copye van eenen brief. Geschreven aen seeckeren Vriend, over sijnChevoel en Oordeel, Dat alle de gene, die niet en gebruycken de uytterlijcke Instellingenvan Doop ende Avondmael, Kerck-gang, etc. niet en zijn geley d’ door den geest Gods,maer door eenen Dwael-geest. Waer inne getoond word wat den Doop Christi, ende hetrecht Avendmael is, ouck wat het Woordt Godts is, waer ende hoe men Godts Woordhooren magh, ende alleenlijck hooren kan, om daer door levendigh gemaeckt te worden.Daer bij oock klaerlijck bewesen word, Dat geen Secte teg enwoordigh, van de Gerefor-meerden af, tot de Papisten toe soo klaer konnen bewijsen uyt de H. Schriften, dat deInstellingen of Sacramenten, gelijck sij die noemen, van Doop, Avondmael, Predick-ampt ofte Priesterdom, moeten altijd onder de Christenen duuren, als de Joden wel kon-den doen van het eewigh duuren van haer Befnijdenisse, Paesch-lam, Priester-ampt, etc.die nochtans gedwaelt habben, als Overtreders des Wets: Ende dermalven dat sij nustrafwaerdiger zijn als de Joden, die den Gheest Christi in Sijne Kinderen, door de Let-ter soo veroordeelen. Nu gemeen gemaeckt tot dienst der Eenvoudige, die noch door Men-schen leeringe verstrickt, ende met Insettingen belast zijn, weicke dinge alle verderven do-or’t gebruyck, na de geboden en leeringen der Menschen. Door B(enjamin) F(urly)O.O., 1666.

40 [FURLY], Tyranny and Hypocrisy cit., pp. 67-71.

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among the Quakers in The Netherlands.41 But from 1689 wedo not find any evidence of his taking an active role insidethe movement, and around 1692 we know that his relation-ships with the Dutch Quakers were conflictual. From 1693,they did not consider him a Quaker anymore, accusing himof being worldly. The Quaker who thirty years before hadwritten a book against the practice of removing ones hat as aform of greeting was accused of uncovering his head in thecourt and doing so for the not so noble reason that he wantedto marry a rich widow. And in fact, on the 10th of Novemberof that year, Furly married the widow Susanna Huis at theStadhuis of Rotterdam. The civil wedding was not precededby a Quaker matrimonial ceremony.42 In some of his letterswritten in the following years Furly abandoned the plain lan-guage of the Quakers and used the forbidden terms of address,«Mister» and «Sir». He returned to using the «you» and to call-ing the months by their traditional (pagan) names. When hedied in March 1714, he was buried in the Calvinist church ofRotterdam, St. Lawrence or Grote Kerk.

The significance of Furly’s adherence to the hatmen

Furly in old age abandoned the Quaker use of using the«thou» and the practice of not taking off his hat as a form ofgreeting. His adherence to the hatmen’s group can thereforebe seen as an episode of juvenile extremism of little impor-tance in his intellectual odyssey. In fact it has been consideredas such by the greater part of the scholars who have studiedhim. The intellectual journey which resulted in the author ofDe eere des werelds ontdeckt leaving the religious group of which

41 W. I. HULL, Benjamin Furly cit., passim. Cf. also CLAUS BERNET, Ames,Caton, and Furly: Three Quaker Missionaries in Holland and North Germany in theLate Seventeenth Century, «Freikirchenforschung», XIII, 2003, pp. 242-260.

42 See LOCKE, Correspondence, vol. 4: 745-6 and 764-6 (Letters 1672 and1684); HULL, Benjamin Furly, p. 157. Also Arie van der Schoor’s article pp. 11-30 above.

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he was part of for many years, and being accused of world-liness, is probably less incoherent than it might seem at firstsight. Central to Furly’s support for the positions of Perrot inthe controversy was the issue of freedom of conscience.Someone who did not feel moved to do so, should not beobliged to remove his hat. The long document of 1663 makesclear that for Furly the desire to impose group discipline onsuch a matter betrayed the more authentic inspiration ofQuakerism: the ontological principle that, by following theinner light, one could attain on this earth the perfection ofAdam before the fall. From this principle, as Pier Cesare Borihas shown so acutely, derived the hermeneutical principlethat it was useless to read the Bible except in the same Spiritas whosoever had written it.43 It was therefore meaningless toappeal to the letter of the Scripture in order to oblige men touncover their heads during the prayer (1 Cor 11). In the sameway on the basis of Exodus 3:5, which relates that God or-dered Moses to take off his shoes if he wanted to get close tothe burning bush, you could say that God appreciated barefeet more than uncovered heads. The hat issue, according tothe supporters of Perrot, would unavoidably bring the move-ment to renege on the practice of equality between men andwomen which characterized the heroic first beginnings of theQuaker movement. It was not just a matter of dress. If on thebasis of 1Corinthians 11 one obliged men not to cover theirheads and obliged women to veil themselves, on the basis of1Corinthians 14, you had to impose silence on the women(«Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is notpermitted unto them to speak; but [they are commanded] tobe under obedience, as also saith the law»). The danger wasthat silence would descend on the silent meetings of theQuakers. Veiled women had to keep silent, and soon theSpirit would not speak even to the men forced to keep theirheads uncovered. No longer free to act as the Spirit moved

43 PIER CESARE BORI e MASSIMO LOLLINI, La società degli amici. Il pensiero deiquaccheri, Milano, Linea d’ombra, 1993, pp. 19, 88.

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them, even they would be condemned to silence, a silence,then, that would no longer be the means to let the Spiritspeak, but the sign that instead of following the inner Lightthey had newly lost their way in the darkness of the world.

The question at issue concerned the limits of direct inspi-ration: for the Quakers who opposed Perrot, if this were notcontrolled, it would inevitably lead to universalistic tenden-cies that would have very quickly brought about the dissolu-tion of the movement. The successive history of the Quakersdemonstrated there was right on both sides. The Quakers sur-vived the Restoration and organized themselves in a Church,with a defined system of dogmas and an efficient hierarchicalorganization, but the movement stopped growing, and lostnot only the subversive character that had characterized it inthe first years of its existence, but also a great part of the en-thusiasm that had made of the Quakers the most extraordi-nary preachers of England in the 1650s. On the other hand,the people who in later years supported the positions of Per-rot, and set themselves in opposition to the movement, eitherabjured their previous positions and accepted the process oforganization put into effect by Fox or, for the greater part,like Perrot, eventually abandoned the distinctive features ofthe Quakers, including use of plain language and even theirrefusal of «hat honour». Furly chose to remain with theQuakers. It is not clear when he abandoned the hatmen’s fac-tion but it is probable that he had made this choice around1664 or 1665; it can in fact be assumed that the «recantation»of 1669 had been written in order to halt the circulation ofhis philo-perrottian writings of some years before, but that, atthat time, he had already found himself again with the majori-ty of the movement. His dissent, therefore, was limited intime. Furly, as William Hull has already written in his 1941monograph on him, became, on the death of Caton in 1665,the most eminent figure of the Rotterdam Quakers. Accord-ing to Hull, Furly came practically «to lead» the Quakers ofRotterdam and understood the necessity of an organizationalgrip that limited the extravagances and the extremisms of hisco-religionists. This led him to progressively dissociate from

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the positions previously taken on the matter «hat honour».This hypothesis seems very plausible.44

In the light of the ensuing intellectual journey of Furly, itis possible that Furly’s adherence to Perrot’s views in the early1660s could illuminate his conception of Quakerism in lateryears. In this regard, the image of the Quakers that emerges inthe account of the travels of Cosimo de’ Medici in England isinstructive. In the well-know account of the travels of theGrand Prince of Tuscany in England, there is extensive cov-erage of the «false doctrines» of the Quakers in which it iswritten that, «all men have within them a certain light, bywhich they may be saved without any other assistance fromGod», that «we are justified by the natural justice peculiar toourselves, which is within us», that «after this mortal life, noother state of being is to be expected», that «those passages ofScripture which refer to heaven, hell, and the resurrection ofthe dead, are fables». It is obvious the Quakers, after the1660s, would not have recognized themselves in this «ratio-nalistic» view of their religion.45 But it is not fanciful to thinkthat many Quakers who, like Furly, were opposed to theobligatory removal of their hats during worship, shared thisline of thinking.

The hitherto unknown source used by the drafters of theaccount of Cosimo de’ Medici’s travels, has resulted in an as-sociation between rationalistic image of Quakerism with the

44 W. I. HULL, Benjamin Furly cit., pp. 19-20.45 Travels of Cosmo the Third Grand Duke of Tuscany through England during

the reign of King Charles the Second (1669). Translated from the Italian Ms. in theLaurentian Library at Florence to which is prefixed a Memoir of the Life. Illustratedwith a portrait of His Highness and 39 views of the metropolis, citie; towns and noble-men: and gentlemen’s seats as delineated at that period by artists in the suite of Cosmo,London, printed for Mawman, Ludgate Street, 1821, pp. 447-451, in part. pp.449-450, ANNA MARIA CRINÒ (a cura di), Un principe di Toscana in Inghilterra e inIrlanda nel 1669. Relazione ufficiale del viaggio di Cosimo de’ Medici tratta dal «Gior-nale» di L. Magalotti con gli acquerelli palatini, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Lettera-tura, 1968, pp. 231-232. On the relation, on its sources and on the impossibili-ty of attribution to Magalotti see STEFANO VILLANI, La religione degli inglesi e ilviaggio del principe. Note sulla Relazione Ufficiale del viaggio di Cosimo de’ Medici inInghilterra (1669), «Studi Secenteschi», XLV, 2004, pp. 175-194.

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more enthusiastic wing protagonists of the hat controversy.The source is a text published in the 1669 by the Irish Fran-ciscan, Anthony Bruodin, with the title Propugnaculum Ca-tholicae veritatis, in which he describes the English religioussects to demonstrate the madnesses to which you were broughtby abandoning the Catholic Church.46 In his turn, Bruodin’ssources were (1) the conversations that he had in Bavaria with aLondon Quaker, a certain Thomas Taylor, who after havinggone to Transylvania and Hungary had been arrested on hisway back and imprisoned in Munich, (2) the conversationsthat he had with the Irish Franciscan, Maurice Conry, and (3)the reading of a little book that the latter published in 1659in Innsbruck, Threnodia Hiberno-Catholica.47 Of Taylor, noth-ing is known, and only further investigations could tell us ifhis mission was connected in some way to that of John Phil-ley. Together with William Moore, Philley visited Germanyand central Europe between 1661 and 1664, was arrested, andwas later in contact with Furly, showing that he too support-ed Perrot’s position regarding hats.48 But it is the fact thatBruodin based his report on the information received fromConry that makes this source extraordinarily interesting.Conry was able to converse extensively with both Nayler andwith Perrot, in exceptional and dramatic circumstances. Con-ry was in fact a fellow prisoner of Nayler in the jails of Bristolwhere, as a Catholic, he too had been imprisoned. Later hewas taken to London where he remained in prison for two

46 ANTONIUS BRUODIN, Propugnaculum Catholicae Veritatis, Libris X. Con-structum, in duásque Partes divisum. Pars prima Historica, in quinque Libros secta.Opus plane novum, utile, lectuque perjucundm (ut ex sequenti rerum contentarum breviElencho colligere fas est) in gratiam veritatis indagatorum, ac confusionem in malo obsti-natorum, nunc primò editum, et in lucem publicatum, Pragæ, Typis Universitatis Ca-rolo Ferdinandeæ, in Collegio Societ. Jesu ad S. Clementem, 1669, pp. 625-633.

47 MAURITIUS MORISONO, Threnodia Hiberno-Catholica, sive planctus universa-lis totius cleri, et populi Regni Hiberniæ. In qua ... recensetur epitome inauditæ ... crudeli-tatis, qua Catholici Regni Hiberniæ ... opprimuntur, etc., Typis M. Wagneri, Œni-ponti, 1659. The Threnodia has been reproduced in «Archivium Hibernicum»,XIII, 1947.

48 W. C. BRAITHWAITE, The Second Period of Quakerism cit., p. 216 and note.

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and a half years.49 Once released, he left England and, in June1658, we find him in Rome where he participated in the trialof John Perrot and John Luffe, probably as a translator.

In June 1658, the Franciscan who had been persecuted inEngland by the same authorities that persecuted the Quakers,and who had been a fellow prisoner of one of the leaders ofthe movement, came to practically take on the role of perse-cutor of his former fellow sufferers in Rome.50 The very fact

49 A. BRUODINUS, Propugnaculum cit., p. 626.50 Maurice Conry di Thomond, studied at the Irish College of St. Isidore

in Rome. Around February 1644 he was at the Grand Couvent in Paris, wherehe was working on an edition of a Latin-Irish Dictionary (LUKE WADDING, An-nales, XXIX, Roma, 1948, p. 187; CANICE MOONEY, Irish Franciscan relation withFrance, Dublin, Clonmore and Reynolds, 1964, p. 16). Between 1650 and1652 he taught theology at Prague. In 1652 he went to Ireland. He collaborat-ed with father John Colgan at the redaction of the Acta Santorum Hiberniae(BRENDAN JENNINGS, Michael O Cleirigh, Talbot Press, Dublin & Cork 1936, p.209). A deposition kept in the Archives of Propaganda Fide at Rome tells usthat in his religious order («nella sua Religione») he was generally considered an«unquiet and turbulent man» («huomo torbido et inquieto») and that in Ire-land, while fooling around with firearms, he killed a man by mistake. Probablyafter this murder, Conry left Ireland and went to England, was arrested in Au-gust, 1655, presumably at Bristol. Then the Irish Franciscan was taken to aLondon prison where he was detained for two and a half years. Back in Italy,he was in Rome in 1658. In the Autumn of that year he asked to come backto Ireland, perhaps because the climate in Rome was hostile towards him(During his Roman sojourn, Conry was not hosted by the college of St.Isidore, but went in the convent of S. Bartolomeo all’Isola). The congregationof Propaganda Fide refused permission, on the basis of the account just quoted,which had been obtained because «the look and the manners of brother Mauri-tio gave grounds for suspicion that he was not suited for this function» of mis-sionary («l’aspetto, e le maniere di fra Mauritio davano qualche sospetto d’esserpoco atto a questa funtione»). Not having obtained permission to go to Irelandas a missionary, Conry, stayed at Bozen, where, in the first months of 1659 hewrote Threnodia Hiberno-Catholica. He then went to Innsbruck where he pub-lished his work, and to Prague. Back in England in 1660 he died before 1669.The «Relatione della persona del P. fra Mauritio Conri raccolta da persone beninformate di sua vita» is in Archivio Propaganda Fide, Rome, Fondo Vienna, 14,c. 309r, the relation is dated 26 November. Cf. Ibid., Fondo Vienna, 14, ff. 295r,296r, 297r, 298r, 300r, 306r, 309r. Acta 27 (1658), cc. 256v-257v, 261v-262v.On Conry cf. Father Luke Wadding commemorative volume (edited by the Francis-can Fathers dún Mhuire, Killiney), Dublin, Clonmore and Reynolds Ltd, Lon-don Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1957, pp. 297, 438-462; BENIGNUS MILLETT,The Irish Franciscans, Gregorian University Press: Roma, 1964, pp. 276-278,

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that he had been able to speak with James Nayler and to par-ticipate directly in the interrogations of John Perrot givesConry’s testimony, and the re-elaboration of it made byBruodin, an extraordinary importance. As we have seen manyof the supporters of Perrot had been followers of Nayler dur-ing his conflicts with Fox and it is certain that the greater partof them thought that the martyr of Bristol was the true inter-preter of Quakerism.51 From what we know of the positionsassumed by Furly in the years of his maturity and by the peo-ple who were part of the circle that gathered around him, it isdifficult to escape the suggestion that he adhered to the «pro-to-illuminist» version of the Quakerism that emerges, in neg-ative terms, from the written descriptions of Bruodin andConry. For Furly, Quakerism was evidently a religion of free-dom. The leading role that he had to play forced him tomodify his principle of inspiration and it is difficult to knowwhat remained of the ideas of his youth in the years of hismaturity. But the contradiction between ‘the extremist’young person of 1663 and the rich «latitudinarian» merchantwho engaged in discussions with Sidney, Locke, Shaftesbury,Le Clerc and Bayle, is perhaps more apparent than real.

328-330; ID., Calendar Calendar of volume 14 of the Fondo di Vienna in PropagandaArchives: Part 3, ff. 284-395, «Collectanea Hibernica. Sources for Irish History»,Nos. 31 and 32, 1989-90, pp. 150, 151-152.

51 On Perrot’s attitude towards Nayler, see KENNETH L. CARROLL, JohnPerrot cit., p. 10.

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