Introduction
The information in this historical section has three main sources - two manuscripts of talks prepared by local Quakers, and the invaluable book 'The Sleepers and the Shadows - Chelmsford: a town, its people and its past', volume 2, by Hilda Grieve.
Hilda's book is based on extensive research in local and national archives.
The Quaker manuscripts were prepared in 1953 and 1971 respectively, and both address the history of Quakers in Mid-Essex. The texts can be accessed by clicking here for the 1953 text, and here for 1971 text. In these two texts, references may be found to Witham Monthly Meeting, which is now known as Mid-Essex Area Meeting.
The Beginnings
Quakers in mid-Essex have been practicing their distinctive form of worship for over three hundred and fifty years.
Essex was a stronghold of Puritanism before the days of Quakers, and in the Essex Sessions Records there are many records of instances of individual revolt.
For instance, in 1642, Bridget, wife of Walter Mildmay of Great Baddow, refused the Holy Sacrement and also refused to go to hear Divine Service; she was convicted. In 1644 many more were convicted for not attending church, at Moulsham, Great Baddow and Springfield. Again in 1644, but on the question of peace, Humphrey Sargent, of Pleshey, a yeoman, was accused of being one of those who mutinously and riotously assembled at Guildhall (in London) about a petition for peace, and to have spoken words against the Parliament and Common Councilmen of London. So the seeds of religious and secular unrest were sown for Quakers, and others, to harvest.
The Quaker movement was founded around 1652 in the north-west of England, but quickly spread as travelling preachers carried the Quaker message. A young man, James Parnell, became a convert to Quakerism, and in 1655, aged just 18, came to Essex. The north of the county had a tradition of radical religious activity, having been a centre of Lollardy and general dissatisfaction with the Church, and people were searching for new directions. James preached in Halstead, Stebbing, Felstead, Coggeshall and Witham. Many were convinced, but there was also much opposition, especially from the Church and judiciary.
In July 1655 James was arrested after speaking to the Church congregation in Coggeshall, and taken to Colchester Castle. Walked to Chelmsford Assizes in chains for trial, he took the opportunity of preaching to people as he was escorted through the town and from the steps of the Assizes. He was found innocent of the charges against him, but convicted of contempt of court for refusing to remove his hat in court, and fined £40. He refused to pay the fine, and so was marched back to Colchester Castle to be imprisoned. Here he died eight months later, in April 1656, after much mistreatment and a fatal fall whilst climbing in a weakened condition a rope to his elevated cell.
The message that James Parnell gave must have been a powerful one, for Quaker Meetings for Worship were being held in Chelmsford in 1656.
Organisational structure
Key to the endurance of the Quaker movement has been the disciplined network created by George Fox in those early days. At the grass roots were the groups of people who met each week for worship. These constituted the Preparatory Meetings. Preparatory Meetings were geographically grouped into Monthly Meetings. At the Monthly Meetings delegates from each of the Preparatory Meetings would discuss financial and spiritual matters relating to their Preparatory Meetings, and agree what actions needed taking, or refer the matter to a higher level. Monthly Meetings were in turn geographically grouped into county Quarterly Meetings at which delegates from the Monthly Meetings would discuss matters that were felt in need of broader airing. Matters could be brought from Quarterly Meetings to the Yearly Meeting for discussion and discernment. Quakers were, and still are, a bottom-up organisation with matters of concern being promulgated upwards until they are resolved at the appropriate level.
This structure is largely intact today, although the nomenclature has changed in the last few years. The grass roots meetings are now known as Local Meetings, the Monthly Meetings as Area Meetings; and the Quarterly Meetings have become Regional Gatherings but shorn of their business functions. Yearly Meeting continues unchanged.
Quaker discipline
The Quaker 'Discipline' has been an enduring (and changing) feature - a foundation - of Quaker life. 'Discipline' is not now a popular word, but in the seventeenth century it was rooted in ideas of learning and discipleship, and for Quakers consists for the most part of advice and counsel. One of the earliest copies of Quaker 'Discipline' is an Epistle from the Elders at Balby, 1656, setting out a framework for living a Quakerly life at that time.
Fox constantly travelled the country advising his followers, and in September 1667 he arrived in Felsted to discuss Quaker organisation in Essex. Witham Monthly Meeting was set up, comprising meetings at Heybridge, Steeple, Cressing, Witham, Baddow and Fuller Street; but by the start of the 18th century this had changed to Witham, Maldon, Chelmsford, Cressing, Billericay and Fuller Street. Now known as Mid-Essex Area Meeting, the group of Local Quaker Meetings - Chelmsford, Maldon, Billericay and Brentwood - hold and administer their assets - money, land and buildings - collectively.
From the earliest days Quakers kept written minutes of their meetings to discuss financial and spiritual matters. They also kept a record of births, marriages and deaths in the Meetings. The minutes of Witham Monthly Meeting commence in 1672, and in Essex Record Office there are volumes of minutes covering the years 1672 to 1948 which can be accessed by the general public.
Each Local Meeting appoints elders who have responsibility for the spiritual life of their meeting. It falls to them to help erring members see their faults. It would seem that at the start of the 18th century, the moral standards of some mid-Essex Quakers was low. In 1703 it is recorded that Chelmsford Local Meeting deputed several elders 'to go to John Bucknell and his wife to discourse them about some disorderly walking' (the phrase "disorderly walking" implies straying from the path required by Quaker discipline, and places the member in imminent danger of disownment); and in 1705 the elders were 'to go to Matthew Joslin's to visit him and his wife, and desire the reasons why they do not keep more constantly to meetings'.Even worse was the case of Thomas Turner, who was the subject of a lengthy minute which ends 'We desire the Lord may give him repentence and that he may witness reconciliation with Him, and until these manifest tokens be demonstrated and seen by Him, we do deny him to be one of us'. Three years later we find that he gave 6d to Monthly Meeting with the resulting minute: 'From this meeting was returned 6d which Thomas Turner laid down to the collection, this meeting not having freedome to receive it'!
Persecution and Sufferings
Post-civil war England in the mid-seventeenth century was a bad time to found a radical religious group, and the Quakers were seen by the state, clergy, and judiciary as yet another anti-establishment group. In Chelmsford library there is a copy of the Quarter Sessions Order Book 1651-1661 which contains a summary of the judicial and administrative business that had been transacted in the court during that period. An entry for 15 July 1656 is headed "QUAKERS":
"Whereas this Court doth take notice from divers partes of this Country That many idle, seditious and evil disposed persons doe travaile and walk from County to County and from place to place propagating and spreading certain obdurate and damnable opinions and delusions derogatory to the House of God and destructive to men's soules, subverting the principles of Christianity and seducing and withdrawing many persons from their due obedience to the good Government of the Nation, and that many such persons doe in sundry partes of this Country frequently assemble and gather themselves together drawing unto them many other persons suiting their evil disposition soe that multitudes of such persons doe often appear in the Country to the terror of good and peacable people and disturbance of the publique peace And also divers persons minding and desiring to hinder and obstruct the due worship and service of Almighty God doe often enter into publique assemblies of the good people of the Country as well as upon the Lords Dayes as other days --------- and doe there greatly disturb such Assemblies and reproach, traduce and highly abuse with many invective railings and other approbious speeches the Ministers and dispensers of God's word and other of God's people ----- This Court doth think fitt and doth order and command that the Chief Constables of the severall hundreds in this County doe forthwith make out their precepts to the petty Constables of the severall parrishes and places within their respective hundreds Straitly charging and commanding them that they use all possible diligence to apprehend all such evill disposed persons that shall or may bee found within this County -------------"
Worse was to come....
- In 1662 the Quaker Act provided penalties for those opposed to taking oaths.
- In 1664 the Conventicle Act banned all religious meetings other than those of the established church.
Quaker meetings were asked to supply the Monthly Meeting with written answers to a number of questions, some of which were concerning adherence to the Quaker Discipline. By collating these replies, an annual picture of the state of the Quaker community could be gained. From the 1682 minute book of Mid-Essex Quakers, the queries read:
- What present the prisoners?
- How many discharged since last year, when, how?
- How many died prisoners?
- How many meeting houses built, and what new meetings settled?
- How many publick friends died, and when?
- What is the state of your meeting?
- Do friends [Quakers], by example and precept, endeavour to train up their children, servants, etc in plainness of speech, behaviour and apparel?
- Are you faithful against tythes?
- Do you stand clear in our testimony against defrauding the King and his customs duties, or excise, or in dealing in goods suspected to be run?
- How are the poor provided among you, and what care is taken for educating their offspring?
- Do you bear a faithful testimony against bearing arms, and paying trophy money, or being in any manner concerned in the militia, in privateers, letters of marque, armed vessels or in dealing in prize goods as such?
The Toleration Act
In 1689, some relief came with the passing of the Toleration Act, which resulted in the release of almost 15,000 imprisoned Quakers. Some 450 had already died while in prison. However, dissenters were required to register their meeting locations and were forbidden from meeting in private homes.
In the early minutes of Witham Monthly Meeting there are many mentions of the sufferings which early Quakers endured. Imprisonments for refusing military service. Imprisonments for taking part in Quaker Meetings. Imprisonments for refusing to swear an oath, take the oath of allegiance or even refusing to remove one's hat in court.
In 1677, George Fox recorded in his Journal that on a visit to Chelmsford most local Quakers were in prison - this was the old prison near the stone bridge - but were able to negotiate permission to leave the prison in order to meet with him.
Since a belief in the equality of all men is central to the Quaker faith, refusal to removal one's hat as a mark of respect to another was widely exercised by Quakers; as was the refusal to swear an oath. Since truth and honesty in all dealings were also core to Quakerism, taking an oath to speak the truth implied that you did not always do so! This refusal to swear oaths had serious implications for employment since, as a consequence, access was barred to universities, parliament, and the legal professions. In court, refusal to remove a hat or swear an oath was seen as contempt of court, and a quick route to imprisonment - as James Parnell had discovered to his cost.
A third source of confrontation with the State was the refusal of Quakers to pay dues, such as tithes, to the established Church. Tithes were a yearly sum used to support the local clergy. Quakers argued that since the clergy and their churches were irrelevant to them they would not pay. Refusal to pay Church dues led to courts ordering seizure of goods in payment, known as distraint, a process which often resulted in poverty, or imprisonment. There are long lists of goods and chattels taken for tithes - farm animals, corn and other crops, tools, drapery, ironmongery, furniture, etc, etc - and since the value of the goods taken and the amount of the tithe is fully set out, these lists are now valuable social items of history and help to give a picture of the times. The records for Mid-Essex Quakers show that as late as 1850 distraint for non-payment of tithes is still high, being £1,537 (£90,000 today).
Another aspect of the distraint for tithes which comes out in the records, is that since the bailiffs always took more than the value demanded, there was usually a balance when the goods were sold. This surplus was brought back and given to the person concerned. But Quakers refused to take it, on the grounds that the goods were stolen, and they could not handle the proceeds of theft.
This caused many a headache to the authorities - such as Judge Tindal, whose statue is outside the Shire Hall in Chelmsford, especially when Quakers coupled his name with stolen goods!
It was not until the 1936 Tithes Act, that tithes were dealt with in a manner acceptable to Quakers.
Marriages
As in the rest of England, Mid-Essex Quakers rejection of the established church posed problems for marriages.
In 1653, following a ruling from Parliament that made compulsory a civil marriage ceremony before a justice of the peace, Fox wrote "For the right joyning in marriage is the work of the Lord only, and not the priests or magistrates; for it is God's ordinance and not man's; and therefore Friends [Quakers] cannot consent that they should joyn them together; for we marry none, it's the Lord's work and we are but witnesses". Fox then established the basis of Quaker procedure, stressing the three principles of: adequate preliminaries (to examine prospective spouses concerning their intentions to marry, and to determine that there were no familial obstacles or other potential problems); an open ceremony (including an exchange of declarations and the signing of a certificate); and an efficient method of registration of the marriage. Once the local meeting had approved the couple's intention, an announcement would be made and posted in the market on market day. After this, the wedding could take place.
Following the restoration of the established church for legal marriage in 1660, the Quakers secured successive civil law judgements upholding their marriage as good in law, based largely on the marriage procedure and record keeping established by Fox. It was not until 1753 that Quaker marriages were implicitly recognised by the State, and only in the 1836 Marriage Act that Quaker marriages were explicitly recognised.
The form of the Quaker Marriage certificate has remained largely unaltered over the years, Above are two certificates held by Mid-Essex Quakers, one from 1828 for the marriage of George Wood, a Chelmsford ironmonger,
and one from 2003. The declarations of the two couples are stated, and the certificate witnessed by those present at the marriage.
Births
Locally registers were kept from the late 1650s for births. Responsibility rested with the Monthly Meeting (now Area meeting) who received 'birth notes' from the Preparative Meetings (now Local Meetings), once registered one copy was sent to the Quarterly Meeting. Following the 1776 Yearly Meeting, printed books were provided for this. In some cases adult members recorded their own dates of birth, so that some of the earlier registers contain retrospective entries.
Burials
Burials also caused concern to early Quakers. All burials took place in the local churchyard and were carried out by the priest with the Church Burial Service. Quakers could not accept this, so they had to acquire their own burial ground, and often the burial ground was acquired before the building of the meeting house
Chelmsford Meeting has had several burial grounds as it has moved Meeting Houses. The first was in Baddow Road, and then in Duke Street, and the current burial ground is off Broomfield Road. It was laid out in 1855, and contains headstones from the burial ground in Duke Street. There are magnificent cedar of Lebanon trees along Broomfield Road and in the burial ground, which have grown from seeds collected from the holy land by visiting Chelmsford Quakers.
Chelmsford burial ground, Broomfield Road
Maldon burial ground
Witham had a burial ground in Chipping Hill from 1692.
In the archives at Chelmsford Meeting House there is a Register of Burials for the Duke Street site from 1825 to 1855, after which the new burial ground in Broomfield Road was used. The Register entries were made by John Candler of Springfield, who frequently added a commentary of his own (not always complimentary). Here is one of the entries:
Entry 36
Joseph Wood of Springfield aged about 87 years. Died the 9th month 1832.This very aged man was once a farmer and occupied land in the parish of Sandon but retired from business when he grew an old man, and lived in a cottage with his wife and daughters on the scanty earnings of his past years, aided by the contributions of a generous friend.A very stout man, dressed in a suit of orthodox drab, with a three cornered looped hat, somewhat rusty from long wear, it was curious to see him mounted on a donkey, making his way slowly through the town to meeting. He was a very ignorant unreflecting man, having very few ideas, and passed his time as if the chief end of existence were to eat and drink, and to bask in the beams of the sun.His daughters nursed him faithfully in sickness and he died full of years.