Transcribed from the 1885 George Routledge and Sons edition byDavid Price,
THE HISTORY
OF
THOMAS ELLWOOD
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HENRYMORLEY
LL.D., PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATUREAT
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
NEW YORK: 9 LAFAVETTE PLACE
1885
INTRODUCTION.
The life of the simple Quaker,Thomas Ellwood, to whom the pomps and shows of earth were nowhereso vain as in association with the spiritual life of man, mayserve as companion to another volume in this Library, the“Life of Wolsey” by George Cavendish, who, as agentleman of the great prelate’s household, made part ofhis pomp, but had heart to love him in his pride and in hisfall. “The History of Thomas Ellwood, written byHimself,” is interesting for the frankness with which itmakes Thomas Ellwood himself known to us; and again, for the samefrank simplicity that brings us nearer than books usually bringus to a living knowledge of some features of a bygone time; andyet again, because it helps us a little to come near to Milton inhis daily life. He would be a good novelist who couldinvent as pleasant a book as this unaffected record of a quietlife touched by great influences in eventful times.
Thomas Ellwood, who was born in 1639, in the reign of Charlesthe First, carried the story of his life in this book to the year1683, when he was forty-four years old. He outlived thedays of trouble here recorded, enjoyed many years of peace, anddied, near the end of Queen Anne’s reign, aged 74, on thefirst of March 1713, in his house at Hunger Hill, byAmersham. He was eleven years younger than John Bunyan, andyears younger than George Fox, the founder of that faithful bandof worshippers known as the Society of Friends. They turnedfrom all forms and ceremonies that involved untruth orinsincerity, now the temple of God in man’s body, and, asSaint Paul said the Corinthians, “Know ye not that ye arethe temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth inyou,” they sought to bring Christ into their hearts, andspeak and act as if Christ was within governing their words andactions. They would have no formal prayers, no formalpreaching, but sought to speak with each other as the Spiritprompted, soul to soul. They would not, when our pluralpronoun “you” was still only plural, speak to one manas if he were two or more. They swore not at all; but their“Yea” and “Nay” were known to be morebinding than the oaths of many of their persecutors. And asthey would not go through the required form of swearingallegiance to the Government whenever called upon to do so, theywere continually liable to penalties of imprisonment whenimprisonment too often meant jail fever, misery, and death. George Fox began his teaching when Ellwood was eight yearsold. Ellwood was ten years old when Fox was firstimprisoned at Nottingham, and the offences of his followersagainst established forms led, as he says, to “great rage,blows, punchings, beatings, and imprisonments.” Ofwhat this rage meant, and of the spirit in which it was endured,we learn much from t