CHAPTER VIII,

MEETING HOUSES.

ON account of increasing congregations Friends soon

found it necessary to acquire meeting-houses in town and country instead of assembling in a house or premises belonging to some more affluent member of the Society, which procedure met with great opposition from the government as tending to establish what they desired to uproot, and full powers were given to those in authority for either closing or, if necessary, pulling down these meeting-places.

As a consequence many were closed, but when barred out the Friends met quietly around the doors or in the street; and when wrecked, as was not infrequently the case, they settled down calmly to their worship amid its ruins, although as a consequence they would be swept off to prison. Such was the holy ardour then prevailing that in one case where all the parents were in custody the children met and kept up the meeting themselves. In one instance, in London, the meeting-place was seized on behalf of the king as a guard house for his soldiers. At another London meeting-house the parish clergyman insisted on reading the English service there, but Friends only waited till he had finished to hold their meeting.

The governor of the Tower of London made himself conspicuous in this treatment of such places within his jurisdiction and had wrecked several before any check could be obtained against his proceeding, but when his men came to pull down one in Spitalfields they were told it was private property of a Friend, who was therefore ordered to attend at the Tower, and explain his conduct in having such an unlawful place. Now this Friend was just then away on some religious service in the far west of England, and the utmost favour attainable from the Governor was a delay of a fortnight in his appearance.

Gilbert Latey (the Friend concerned) had this news conveyed to him, but no threatened damage to any of his property would allow him unduly to hasten toward a conclusion of his religious service. However, it so occurred in its course as to bring him back to London just before the fortnight's expiration. Now he was shrewd as well as pious, and having moved in upper circles through his former business of clothier and outfitter at the West End, was acquainted with the rights of individuals as to Property.

He at once ordered some household furniture to be sent in to this threatened meeting-house, and having told one of his pensioners he must go to live there, had a lease of it to him legally prepared, and so soon as it was signed announced his readiness to go with his friends to see the governor in the Tower of London, who as soon as he saw Gilbert Latey reproached him violently for having broken the King's law in own

ing a meeting-house, and although told he had had it before there was any such law, exclaimed such should not save it from destruction. "But," calmly interposed Gilbert, "I have a tenant there in possession, and one of whom I have so good an opinion that I have granted him a lease." "There, now you have me," said the baffled official, "and had your friends but had half your wits they would have saved their other meeting-houses." The fact being that by furniture, tenant, and lease the wary Gilbert had invested the meeting-house with the sanctity of a dwelling, which no royal proclamation or Act of Parliament has ever yet violated to deprive a subject of the realm from regarding his home as a castle -that not even a Governor of the Tower of London in a persecuting age dared to destroy.

The plan thus initiated by Gilbert Latey, was adopted by the Society, so that all their early meetinghouses were provided with sufficient household accommodation to enable them, in the eye of the law, to pass as a dwelling, and often their living rooms would be in the occupation of an educational Friend, who would use the premises as a school-room during the week. The early chapels of Nonconformists adopted generally similar arrangements, and when one of the earliest of these, in a London suburb, was pulled down some years ago, there were discovered some forgotten chambers in the roof that had served this purpose in days of peril to such property.

A great many Friends' meeting-houses remain in country districts, especially in Yorkshire, mostly in

tended for but small congregations, with living-rooms under the same roof at one end. Such is the one George Fox gave to the Friends of Swarthmore, to which he bequeathed his ebony bedstead, table, and chairs, desiring that such might furnish a chamber for any travelling minister on his visit. It was no doubt intended as an example that was very generally followed in these country meeting-houses.

CHAPTER IX.

GEORGE WHITEHEAD AND HIS SERVICE,

"Loyalty to the State is impossible without conformity to the State form of Religion."

THE

HE accession of William and Mary to the English throne in 1688, inaugurated an Era of Constitutional Government that ensured to all loyal and peaceable subjects a freedom for worship according to their own conscientious beliefs, and not as the Law might direct.

It was a lesson government and statesmen had been slow to learn, that uniform loyalty could be secured without uniformity of religious practice-but the granting this liberty to Friends presented special difficulties on account of their refusal of the Oaths of Allegiance having raised doubts as to their loyalty. It needed much negotiation before some compromise could be effected in the form of a Declaration sufficiently solemn to satisfy the authorities, and also sufficiently free from any approach to swearing as not to offend the consciences of Friends.

The working of democratic bodies seems favourable to someone being found in each emergency gifted to steer the course, and the Friends throughout their long and chequered career have never failed in having at such times an able leader or counsellor-which George Whitehead so truly became in the conduct of these affairs that some personal details respecting him may be given.