Thought for the Week: 1652 country
Robert Straughton reflects on the beautiful and historic 1652 country
The story of George Fox meeting up with the Westmorland Seekers and the Fell family is so extraordinary, and was so transformational, that it is rightly the core of what visitors to 1652 country rediscover in retreading the paths and experiencing the places where those happenings occurred. We may be uncomfortable with the word ‘pilgrimage’ – but let’s not get hung up on it when there is so much to inspire on a visit to this tract of Quaker Britain.
In the 1600s what we now know as this pilgrimage country was not a backwater. It was a place of industry and enterprise. Original threads of the industrial revolution led from here to Coalbrookdale and beyond. It was also a place of ‘free thinking’ – where stubborn ‘Viking’ independences had survived the Normans and their church.
So, it was not a matter of chance that, of all places in the seventeenth century, it was here that George Fox, Margaret Fell and many of those who would become ‘travellers in the truth’ would commence a ‘Religious Society of Friends’ that would go on to take hold in the hearts of so many.
Quakers have always endeavoured to live in the real world, but with a vision that it can become ‘The Peaceable Kingdom’ – if only mankind would live and work ‘in the spirit’. This is why, in pursuing pilgrimage, we must also see 1652 country in its full reality today because, unparalleled in Britain and possibly the western world, it shows starkly how much we need to pursue our Quaker witness.
Fighter jets and unmanned drones that can snuff out life as in a computer game are made almost in the shadow of Pendle Hill. Within fifteen minutes drive of Swarthmoor Hall is one of the major arms makers of the twenty-first century. The company builds submarines, which host weapons that can kill millions, and guns that, in Afghanistan so the marketing spiel goes, can ‘take out a room in a house at forty-two kilometres’. All this in a town that has some of the highest measures of social deprivation in the UK.
Twenty miles from Swarthmoor Hall they are hoping to bury nuclear waste for thousands of years. This is not because it will be safe there but because it is politically convenient now. Like most of Britain, this area was involved with the slave trade. Then, at least, it was mainly out of sight and out of mind. In 2004, on a February tide, at least twenty-one Chinese people drowned in Morecambe Bay while employed in a convoluted twenty-first century form of slavery, which was highly visible to the public, the media and all relevant government and safety authorities.
The Quaker pilgrimage country was not a backwater in 1652 and it is not now. But it is beautiful and it is historic. There is so much to take pleasure in and to enjoy. The Quaker story to be experienced here is one of love, inspiration, of speaking truth to power and of great hope in mankind and in the future. In 1652 country we will show you where, how and why Quakerism was first revealed – and what we still have to do, as Quakers, walking cheerfully, living adventurously – and letting our lives speak.
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