‘They always include praise or loving address to the divine.’

Parting and piety: Jane Mace has more on the deathbed testimonies of early Friends

This year, as every year, the documents published in advance of Yearly Meeting will include the collection of ‘Testimonies to the grace of God’ as shown in the lives of Friends who have died. At Yearly Meeting itself, a Friend will read two or three of them aloud. An earlier equivalent to this is a less well known publishing (and reading) activity in the Society: the collections of ‘dying sayings’ (including children).

Somewhere in the cupboards and shelves of all Area Meetings today, there should still be a copy or two of this collection of small stout leather-bound volumes, with the title Piety Promoted stamped on their spines. Published at intervals over a period of nearly a hundred years, these were distributed across the Society. Their purpose was to inspire others in the Quaker movement with the ‘labours’ and ‘sufferings’ of their predecessors.
These are the words on the title page of the volume in my own Area Meeting library:

Piety Promoted,
IN A
COLLECTION
OF THE
Dying Sayings
Of many of the
People call’d Quakers,
WITH
A Brief Account of some of their
Labours in the GOSPEL, and
Sufferings for the same

By John Tomkins

London, Printed and Sold by T.Sowle in
White-Hart-court in Gracious-Street, 1703

History tells us that the founders of our movement certainly had a lot of sufferings to endure: abuse in their streets, marketplaces and homes; fines; imprisonments; and other grotesque injustices. Throughout the 1660s and 1670s, several thousand Friends were incarcerated in wretched conditions (many of them several times); several hundred died while in prison. In the view of their contemporaries, the sayings of those whose faith had survived such suffering could only be a source of strength to others still enduring – especially when uttered (and recorded) within hours of their passing.

As to their printer, ‘T.Sowle’ or Tace Sowle, in Trish Carn’s words she was ‘virtually the official Quaker publisher’ of the period (the Friend, 4 February 2011). As successor in her father Andrew’s business, she went on to print and distribute Quaker writings for some fifty years after his death. In this volume, these included Andrew’s own ‘dying sayings’ (along with some 150 others).

Dying in 1695 at the age of sixty-seven, Andrew Sowle had had a commitment to ‘the Truth’ that had enabled him ‘with much Cheerfulness to undergo those manifold Afflictions and Persecutions, with which he was exercised… being for several Years together in continual danger; his House being often searched and his Printing Materials, as Press, Letter, &c, as often broken to pieces, and taken away… During which time, tho’ he met with great Losses, and had at one time, by his Adversaries, about a Thousand Reams of Printed Books taken from him; yet he was never heard to complain, but would say, He was glad he had anything to lose for Truth, and that the Lord had made him worthy to be a Sufferer for it.’

Who were the intended listeners to (or readings of) these dying sayings? By way of answer, as I read, I began to notice the pattern. The intended audiences were quite simple: family, Friends and God. Here are three examples. In the case of fourteen-year-old Jonah Lawson of Westmoreland, dying of smallpox in 1683, he addressed (in turn) his father, sister, and ‘the Lord’: ‘In his Sickness, his Father putting him in mind of the difference betwixt this World and Heaven, where is nothing but Joy; the Lad answered, Ay Father, I hope I have but little to answer for, and that I have a good Conscience; I have abhorred Lying and Swearing, and what I saw to be evil, and am willing to die, if it be his pleasure, or to live to praise him…

‘His Sister weeping, he said to her, Weep not, I hope we shall meet in a better place. Soon after he uttered these words to the Lord, The Time thou hast appointed for me on Earth, give me Grace to praise thy Name. Presently after, as answer’d from Heaven, he said, O sweet God. And a little before his departure, his Father and Sister present, he said, So, so; I am coming, I am coming; I must yield, I must yield.’

In those last words Jonah is addressing two listeners at once: first, a hospitable God, waiting to welcome him (‘I am coming, I am coming’); second, his grieving family (telling them ‘I must yield, I must yield’).

Dying sayings, as here, often combine reassurances to mourners (‘weep not’ – don’t worry about me; I go willingly) with exhortations, explicit or implied (‘I have a good conscience’ – take care you have the same when your time comes). And always they include praise or loving address to the divine (‘O sweet God’).

Dying in Ireland the same year as Andrew Sowle, Deborah Sandham intersperses her addresses to family and friends with ‘fervent’ prayers to the Lord. ‘A faithful Serviceable Woman to her End, bearing a true and sound Testimony for God’, she had survived her husband (whose ‘dying sayings’ preceded hers in the volume) by some twenty years. On the day of her death she speaks to her daughter: ‘Thou are my first Born, and always very Dear to me, I cannot now say much more unto thee, but mind my former Exhortations, and remember that Truth was more than all, and Truth was over all with me, and Truth was thy Mothers chiefest Treasure, Often saying, My Dear Child give me up, give me up, intreat the Lord to enable thee to give me up; for I am freely given up to the Lords Will, and taking her last Farewel of her Children, and Grandchildren… some time after, turning herself about in her bed, said: I am now a going to leave you.’

In the last stages of a protracted illness Mercy Johnson (who died in Manchester, 1704, at the age of thirty-four) also addresses three audiences – this time close family, other visitors present and the community of Friends beyond. She includes hymn-singing from her bed, giving comfort to the ‘many Friends’ and relations who visited her, exhorting them to love God as she was doing. Speaking to her husband, she reassures him that while ‘this outward Body grows weaker and weaker’, yet – as she puts it – ‘Blessed and Praised be the Lord, my inward Man grows Stronger and Stronger.’ To a Friend praying at her side, she said: ‘I am so filled with God’s Love, I shall never be emptied again.’

As this research continues, I’m hoping to explore further the connections between spoken and written words among Quakers of the time. My imagination has been alive with the sounds of voices: hearing them speak for themselves at the bedside – and later, hearing their words read aloud in the Meeting rooms of Friends in other parts of the country – bearing in mind John Tomkins’ wish: ‘The Lord give them that read a Heart to understand the Things which belong to their Peace; and if these shall by any means to stir up any to more Faithfulness and Diligence, in making their Calling and Election Sure, my Design is answered, and God shall have the Praise of all, who is worthy for Ever.’

The spoken word is at the heart of our faith and reading, in its origins, an out-loud, collective experience. In our own Meetings as well as in the great gathering of Yearly Meeting in session, we do well not only to give it our hearts, but also our own voices: reading (or speaking) clearly, loudly and slowly – so that authors’ words can truly be heard by all.

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