OF THE

LIFE AND PUBLIC CHARACTER

OF

GEORGE FOX,

WHO FIRST GATHERED

THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS, CALLED QUAKERS,

TO BE A PEOPLE.

Written for the information of Strangers.

BY JACOB POST

LONDON:

W. & F. G. CASH, 5, BISHOPSGATE STREET WITHOUT;

JACOB POST, ISLINGTON.

1854.

210. 2.346.

INTRODUCTION.

BEFORE commencing a memoir of George Fox, it may interest the reader to learn a few particulars of his personal appearance and his private character: no authentic portrait of that extraordinary man is known to exist.

When grown to man's estate, he was of middle stature, inclinable to be stout, but active, graceful, and manly in his person, a benignant look and powerful voice with much of the milk of human kindness in his nature; and he was civil beyond the forms of breeding.

He was favoured with a sound and strong constitution until undermined by the many cruel persecutions which he was made to endure. His dress was plain, but useful and convenient, without any

superfluity, and did not differ from the generality of other in his station of life. He wore his persons hair long, which fell in natural ringlets on his shoulders. He was very temperate in his eating, and his usual beverage was water, with sometimes a sprig of wormwood steeped in it, and he took a less portion of sleep than people ingeneral. It is believed, that George Fox used snuff in very small portions: a snuff-box has been preserved, said to have been his. It is formed from the small end of a bullock's horn, polished, opening at the bottom with a cover; and at the point of the horn there is a small aperture, from which he was accustomed to scatter a few grains of snuff on the back of his hand when he had occasion to relieve his headache.

His school education had been very limited, but he afterwards improved himself by reading and study; and, having a retentive memory, his mind was well stored with a knowledge of natural and civil history.

He greatly promoted education, and was the means of establishing schools for the children of "The Friends," where the useful as well as the higher branches of education were taught, and the principles of the New Testament inculcated in their simple and legitimate meaning.

His Journal, now its seventh edition, has been pronounced by Sir James Mackintosh, to be "One of the most extraordinary and instructive narratives in the world, which no reader of competent judgment can peruse without revering the virtue of the writer."

Besides his journal of eight hundred octavo pages in two volumes, his writings are very voluminous, in letters and epistles, and addresses to kings, magistrates, and other persons, on Doctrinals, on Jurisprudence, or on works of Benevolence. Of his miscellaneous works, Coleridge, in his "Biographia Literaria," observes :— "There exist folios on the human understanding, which would have a far juster claim to their high rank and celebrity, if in the whole huge volume, there could be found as much fulness of heart and intellect, as bursts forth in many a simple page of George Fox."

It was no small labour for him, by word and writing, to answer the numerous cavils of his enemies; many false reports were raised against him and his friends, of holding unsound doctrines, which were again and again answered, and again and again repeated, as though they had never been refuted. In the year 1669, when George Fox was about forty-five years of age, he married the widow of Judge Fell,