ffrend.
Some thing J haue to thee, Jf thou wilt be noble in thy place, lend not an eare to the wicked nor to persecutors, if thee Prests come about thee aganst the Jnnocent, as they haue all wayes don, and Cry help magistrats or else our traid will goe downe. Neither giue eare to Any Sett that comes to the wᵗʰ falce Accusations.... The Lord hath somtimes Restrained such men as would haue done us mischeefe and oft haue J been wᵗʰ the Parlement & they haue been very Ciuell to me & J haue giuen them many Boockes & Letters & they haue Receᵈ them & haue not done those many bad Things against us as Sum would haue had them to haue done; but let persecution sease, and our Meetings in London ware & are still as wee are informed by yᵉ Last Shipes peaceable: and the Last Mayor that wos when J wos there never did us hurt nor broke up ouer metings....
Ther fore take heade that thou doe not Joyne with them that would percecute & wrong yᵉ Jnnocent, for Jf thou doest thou wilt wrong thy one Sole: neither harken thou to such wicked men as will bring thee Storeys & lyes against George ffox, nor anny of Gods people for J haue knone him to be An upright honest harted man as wast in England this twenty fiue years: Soe quit thy selfe well in thy Place & god will bles the but Giue not head to folce accusors nor to the preasts for thos war thay that Crusified Christ & put his Apossells to deth and thay are yᵉ men yᵗ now would doe the same thinges if thay had power. J haue knone there Cruelty aboue this twenty yeares to me & to many others, thouf J haue no Enmyty against them nor noe Revenage Jn my harte but desire that thay Repent and turne to the Lorde as sum of them haue done: Soe Returne to the Light in thy Consciene wᶜʰ will not let the doe any Wrong to any if thou be Obedient to Jt:
from one yᵗ is a louer of thy Sole
Elizabeth Hooton.
Barbados this 7ᵗʰ of the 10ᵗʰ monᵗʰ 1671.
After three months’ stay in that island, on the 8th January, 1671/2, George Fox, accompanied by Elizabeth Hooton and others, left for Jamaica and arrived safely on the 18th.
From the Testimony of James Lancaster[143] concerning Elizabeth Hooton we gather particulars of her illness and death. He says:[144]
Her seruise was to stay at the place called porte royall and alsoe my seruise to be there the next ffirst day and soe comeing in vpon the 7 day of the weeke found her weake in bodie at present though the day before shee had beene among friends in the towne exorting them to faithfullnes in the worke of god and J came vp the staires where shee was and the had newlie taken her out of her bed into a chaire.
She was much swelled and J said let her haue iaire and the opened the windowes and opened her bodies and then her breath came and shee looked vp and see me but could not speake. J said let vs put her into her bed least shee gett cold, and we did and shee looked vpon me and J her my life rose towards her and allsoe her life answered mine again with greate Joy betwixt vs and shee said it is well James thou art come and fastened her arms aboute me and said blessed be the lord god that has made vs partakers of those heuenly mercies and more words to the like effecte and embraced me with a kisse and laid her selfe Downe and turned her selfe on her side and soe her breath went weaker and weaker till it was gone from her and soe passed away as though shee had beene asleep and none knew of her departure but as her breath was gone....
And so, still in the thick of the fight, far from her home in the quiet Nottinghamshire village, she fell on sleep. Though her story is so far removed from our own time, something of that peace enters into our souls in the knowledge that her long and strenuous life ended in a great calm.
George Fox, writing to Friends from Rhode Island, 19th June, 1672, says:[145]
Elizabeth Hootton is deceased at Jamaicae ... James Lancaster was by her and can give an account what words she spoke and of her Testimony concerneing Truth a farther account I shall give concerneing her outward things to her Relations but let her Sonne Oliver gather up all her papers and her sufferings and send them to London that her life and death may bee printed.
To our lasting regret the latter injunction never appears to have been carried out, or at any rate the record has been lost, for no history of her, written by a contemporary, remains, and after the lapse of over two hundred and forty years there are necessarily many blanks which can never be filled. George Fox, in his Testimony concerning her, written in 1690, says:[146]
In her Life she was very much Exercised with priests outward Professours Apostates Backsliders and Profane, for she was a Godly Woman & had a Great Care Lay upon her for People to walk in yᵉ Truth that did Profess itt, and from her Receiving yᵉ Truth she never turned her Back of itt but was fervent & ffaithfull for it till Death.
This is amply confirmed by the fragments of her history which remain to us, and from these fragments she emerges a heroic figure, one who worthily played her part in the heroic age of the Society of Friends: always valiant for the truth, quick to seize any opportunity that offered to plead the cause of her fellow sufferers, even though her own sufferings made the occasion—fearless in denouncing the evils of the time—far in advance of the age in which she lived in her advocacy of prison and other reforms, and, though her methods may appear strangely uncouth in our politer days, yet her history is eloquent in its lessons for us, conscious, it may be, that, in the words of Whittier,
Does not the injunction of an earlier writer[148] need special emphasis to-day? “May we not now, in a time of ease and liberty, live carelessly and indifferently towards Him, but in deep reverence and fear worship him, our great Deliverer, who powerfully wrought in the King’s heart to the setting at freedom and liberty these sons and children of the morning!”
Another age, other problems, and as we consider those which confront us to-day, we ask, with Florence Nightingale, “Was there ever an age in so much need of heroism?” and we recognise too that to solve those problems aright we must approach them in the spirit in which Elizabeth Hooton approached the problems of her time, that spirit which prompted her to say:
All this and much more I have gone thorugh and suffered, and much more could I for the Seed’s sake which is Buried and Oppressed, and as a Cart is laden with Sheaves and as a Prisoner in an inward Prison-House; Yea, the Love that I bear to the Souls of all Men, making me willing to undergo whatsoever can be inflicted.[149]
From the Earliest Minute Book of Nottinghamshire Q.M.