Fire away? Moya visits Banbury Friends for the annual Adderbury Lecture

‘Has the spirit of early Friends entirely left us, or could it be rekindled?’

Back in June, I took a train to Banbury to attend the annual Adderbury Lecture. On the train up, I’d been reading an article about the early history of Quakers in the town. It opened with this paragraph:

‘The Society of Friends, or the Quakers, have been active in Banbury for more than three centuries. For most of this period they have been a small but active religious body, whose behaviour and character have been of the utmost respectability. But Quakerism originated in the Interregnum, the period when the world was turned upside down. For more than a decade it was a movement which was in constant and public dispute with the established authorities.’

As I came out of the station a series of blue and yellow posters reminded me that elsewhere in Europe, people were spending the day in underground shelters, waiting for artillery fire to stop. Following a Meeting for Worship, a Friend spoke in Afterwords of having been born in the 1930s while Europe headed into war. She felt she would likely die while Europe is at war – had we learned nothing? Had there been no progress during her lifetime?

This year’s lecture was on the theme of climate justice. Arriving at the 1675 Meeting house felt like stepping back in time. The dark wood panelling, flagstone floor and corner staircase had a stark simplicity. ‘This meeting house was built by passionate people’, said an elder. I believed her: they had built with a certainty about what was needed to keep Friends dry, warm and focused – and they had built to last.

On the train, I’d read in the Banbury Historical Society journal about other ways these early Friends had expressed their passion, and their need to communicate the truths they saw:

‘On 13 January 1655, Anne Audland and Mabel Camm, the wives of John Audland and John Camm, came to Banbury… Almost immediately after their arrival, Anne Audland and a friend went to the parish church. After the priest had concluded his sermon the friend began to speak, but was silenced by the crowd. Anne Audland protested, but was hustled out by the congregation, and committed to prison by John Austin, the Mayor.

‘In June of the same year, Jane Waugh, a serving maid who worked for the Camms, preached “against deceit” in the market place, and was beaten and abused by a crowd and thrown into prison. The following Sunday, Nathaniel Weston went to the church where the vicar, Samuel Wells, was preaching. On seeing him, Wells interrupted his sermon to say that someone had come into the congregation whom he feared might cause a disturbance, and that he could not therefore proceed to prayer. Weston was hauled out of the church by a magistrate, and taken to the town gaol after refusing to swear an oath.

‘The following month, Sarah Tims, a native of Mollington, met Samuel Wells in the graveyard, and cried out “Man, fear the Lord!” She was attacked by a mob and also committed to prison by the mayor.’

Four Friends, each called to speak their truth to power – in the church, in the market place, and to an authority figure. All were shouted down, all silenced, all physically removed and imprisoned.

Meanwhile in 2022 the Adderbury lecturer, Linda Aspey, told us about a young friend in Extinction Rebellion ‘already imprisoned five times and he’s only twenty-one’. Later, a ninety-year-old Friend spoke up against the recent Police Bill. Back in the seventeenth century, the forces of law and order were also falling back on blanket powers to suppress what they saw as dangerous social disruption:

‘Anne Audland was tried on a charge of blasphemy, and in spite of attempts to influence the jury, and threats that she might be burned, she was declared “not guilty”, but she was convicted of misdemeanour in calling the minister a “false prophet”. She protested her innocence, but was sent back to prison and detained for at least a further fifteen months.

‘When Jane Waugh was brought into court the authorities refused to tell her what offences she had committed. After refusing to give sureties, she was returned to prison where she was kept for five weeks.

‘Sarah Tims was similarly brought to the court without being charged, and when she inquired how she had broken the law, the mayor replied that “sweeping the house and washing dishes was the first part of the law to her” and she too was sent back to the gaol and kept there for six months.

‘Nathaniel Weston refused to swear the oath of abjuration in the court, or to give sureties for his good behaviour, and was re-committed to prison without a charge being made.’

Quakers have a well-earned reputation as a peaceable people. Yet early Friends had transformational experiences of being opened to a Truth they felt compelled to declare. For Linda Aspey, the equivalent moment came while driving home listening to Radio 4. She learned that, over the last fifty years, the Netherlands has lost eighty-four per cent of its butterfly species. The scale of that hit home – she became so upset, she pulled over at the side of the road to cry. She realised she had to do whatever she could to awaken others to these truths – even if it made them angry, even if they wanted to silence her.

Inviting me to Banbury Meeting, the clerk signed off her email ‘With love and rage’. Apparently this is a common Extinction Rebellion slogan – but I think it also captures something of the spirit of Early Friends. Has that spirit now entirely left us, or could it be rekindled? A Banbury Historical Society article I read concluded somewhat discouragingly: ‘Banbury Quaker Meeting continued, declining a little during the eighteenth century… Never again did its members confront the local authorities as they had done in the 1650s, nor were they ever regarded with such suspicion and apprehension. Like many religious bodies, its respectable middle age was very different from its passionate youth’.

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