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Transcribed from the 1885 George Routledge and Sons edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

THE HISTORY OF THOMAS ELLWOOD WRITTEN BY HIMSELF

INTRODUCTION BY HENRY MORLEY

The life of the simple Quaker, Thomas Ellwood, to whom the pomps and
shows of earth were nowhere so vain as in association with the
spiritual life of man, may serve as companion to another volume in
this Library, the "Life of Wolsey" by George Cavendish, who, as a
gentleman of the great prelate's household, made part of his pomp,
but had heart to love him in his pride and in his fall. "The
History of Thomas Ellwood, written by Himself," is interesting for
the frankness with which it makes Thomas Ellwood himself known to
us; and again, for the same frank simplicity that brings us nearer
than books usually bring us to a living knowledge of some features
of a bygone time; and yet again, because it helps us a little to
come near to Milton in his daily life. He would be a good novelist
who could invent as pleasant a book as this unaffected record of a
quiet life touched by great influences in eventful times.

Thomas Ellwood, who was born in 1639, in the reign of Charles the
First, carried the story of his life in this book to the year 1683,
when he was forty-four years old. He outlived the days of trouble
here recorded, enjoyed many years of peace, and died, near the end
of Queen Anne's reign, aged 74, on the first of March 1713, in his
house at Hunger Hill, by Amersham. He was eleven years younger than
John Bunyan, and years younger than George Fox, the founder of that
faithful band of worshippers known as the Society of Friends. They
turned from all forms and ceremonies that involved untruth or
insincerity, now the temple of God in man's body, and, as Saint Paul
said the Corinthians, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you," they sought to bring
Christ into their hearts, and speak and act as if Christ was within
governing their words and actions. They would have no formal
prayers, no formal preaching, but sought to speak with each other as
the Spirit prompted, soul to soul. They would not, when our plural
pronoun "you" was still only plural, speak to one man as if he were
two or more. They swore not at all; but their "Yea" and "Nay" were
known to be more binding than the oaths of many of their
persecutors. And as they would not go through the required form of
swearing allegiance to the Government whenever called upon to do so,
they were continually liable to penalties of imprisonment when
imprisonment too often meant jail fever, misery, and death. George
Fox began his teaching when Ellwood was eight years old. Ellwood
was ten years old when Fox was first imprisoned at Nottingham, and
the offences of his followers against established forms led, as he
says, to "great rage, blows, punchings, beatings, and
imprisonments." Of what this rage meant, and of the spirit in which
it was endured, we learn much from the History of Thomas Ellwood.

Isaac Penington, whose influence upon young Ellwood's mind is often
referred to in this book, was born in the year of Shakespeare's
death, and had joined the Society of Friends in 1658, when his own
age was forty-two and Ellwood's was nineteen. He was the son of
Alderman Isaac Penington, a Puritan member for the City of London,
who announced, at a time in the year 1640 when the Parliament was in
sore need of money, that his constituents had subscribed 21,000
pounds to a loan, which the members of the House then raised to
90,000 pounds, by rising, one after another, to give their personal
bonds each for a thousand pounds. Isaac Penington the son, whom
Ellwood loved as a friend and reverenced as a father, became a
foremost worker and writer in the Society of Friends. In a note
upon him, written after his death, Thomas Ellwood said that "in his
family he was a true pattern of goodness and piety; to his wife he
was a most affectionate husband; to his children, a loving and
tender father; to his servants, a mild and gentle master; to his
friends, a firm and fast friend; to the poor, compassionate and
open-hearted; and to all, courteous and kind?' In 1661 he was
committed to Aylesbury gaol for worshipping God in his own house
(holding a conventicle), "where," says Ellwood in that little
testimony which he wrote after his friend's death, "for seventeen
weeks, great part of it in winter, he was kept in a cold and very
incommodious room, without a chimney; from which hard usage his
tender body contracted so great and violent a distemper that, for
several weeks after, he was not able to turn himself in bed." "His
second imprisonment," says Ellwood, "was in the year 1664, being
taken out of a meeting, when he with others were peaceably waiting
on the Lord, and sent to Aylesbury gaol, where he again remained a
prisoner between seventeen and eighteen weeks.

"His third imprisonment was in the year 1665, being taken up, with
many others, in the open street of Amersham, as they were carrying
and accompanying the body of a deceased Friend to the grave. From
hence he was sent again to Aylesbury gaol; but this commitment being
in order to banishment, was but for a month, or thereabouts.

"His fourth imprisonment was in the same year 1665, about a month
after his releasement from the former. Hitherto his commitment had
been by the civil magistrates; but now, that he might experience the
severity of each, he fell into the military hands. A rude soldier,
without any other warrant than what he carried in his scabbard, came
to his house, and told him he came to fetch him before Sir Philip
Palmer, one of the deputy-lieutenants of the county. He meekly
went, and was by him sent with a guard of soldiers to Aylesbury
gaol, with a kind of mittimus, importing 'That the gaoler should
receive and keep him in safe custody during the pleasure of the Earl
of Bridgewater,' who had, it seems, conceived so great, as well as
unjust, displeasure against this innocent man, that, although (it
being the sickness year) the plague was suspected to be in the gaol,
he would not be prevailed with only to permit Isaac Penington to be
removed to another house in the town, and there kept prisoner until
the gaol was clear. Afterwards, a prisoner dying in the gaol of the
plague, the gaoler's wife, her husband being absent, gave leave to
Isaac Penington to remove to another house, where he was shut up for
six weeks; after which, by the procurement of the Earl of Ancram, a
release was sent from the said Philip Palmer, by which he was
discharged, after he had suffered imprisonment three-quarters of a
year, with apparent hazard of his life, and that for no offence."

This was not the end of the troubles of Ellwood's patron and friend.
He had been home only three weeks when "the said Philip Palmer"
seized him again, dragged him out of bed, sent him, without any
cause shown, to Aylesbury gaol, and kept him a year and a half
prisoner "in rooms so cold, damp, and unhealthy, that it went very
near to cost him his life, and procured him so great a distemper
that he lay weak of it several months. At length a relation of his
wife, by an habeas corpus, removed him to the King's Bench bar,
where (with the wonder of the court that a man should he so long
imprisoned for nothing) he was at last released in the year 1668."
"Paradise Lost" had appeared in the year before. Yet a sixth
imprisonment followed in 1670, when Penington, visiting some Friends
in Reading gaol, was seized and carried before Sir William Armorer,
a justice of the peace, who sent him back to share their sufferings.
Penington died in 1679.

Of Thomas Ellwood's experience as reader to Milton, and of Milton's
regard for the gentle Quaker, the book tells its own tale. I will
only add one comment upon an often-quoted incident that it contains.
When Milton gave his young friend--then twenty-six years old--the
manuscript of "Paradise Lost" to read, his desire could only have
been to learn what comprehension of his purpose there would be in a
young man sincerely religious, as intelligent as most, and with a
taste for verse, though not much of a poet. The observation Ellwood
made, of which he is proud because of its consequence, might well
cause Milton to be silent for a little while, and then change the
conversation. It showed that the whole aim of the poem had been
missed. Its crown is in the story of redemption, Paradise Found,
the better Eden, the "Paradise within thee, happier far." Milton
had applied his test, and learnt--what every great poet has to
learn--that he must trust more to the vague impression of truth,
beauty, and high thought, that can be made upon thousands of right-
hearted men and women, than to the clear, full understanding of his
work. The noblest aims of the true artist can make themselves felt
by all, though understood by few. Few know the secrets of the
sunshine, although all draw new life from the sun. When Milton--
who, with his habitual gentleness, never allowed Ellwood to suspect
that he had missed the whole purpose of "Paradise Lost"--showed him
"Paradise Regained," and made him happy by telling him that he
caused it to be written; he showed him a poem that expanded the
closing thought of "Paradise Lost" into an image of the Paradise
within, that is to be obtained only by an imitation of Christ under
all forms of our temptation.

Of Ellwood's life after the year in which he ends his own account of
it, let it suffice to say, that he wrote earnest, gentle books in
support of his opinions and against the persecution of them. He
lived retired until the year 1688, and occupied himself with an
attempt at a Davideis, a Life of David in verse. He had not then
seen Cowley's. Ellwood carried on his verses to the end of David's
life, and published them in 1712. When George Fox died, in 1690,
Thomas Ellwood transcribed his journal for the press, and printed it
next year in folio, prefixing an account of Fox. He was engaged
afterwards in controversy with George Keith, a seceder from the
Friends. His intellectual activity continued unabated to the end.
In 1709 he suffered distraint for tithes; goods to the value of 24
pounds 10s. being taken for a due of about 14 pounds, after which
the distrainers "brought him still in debt, and wanted more."

Ellwood's life was healthy, except that he was asthmatic towards the
end. His wife died five years before him. Of her, J. Wyeth,
citizen of London, who was the editor of "Ellwood's History of his
Life," and wrote its sequel, says that she was "a solid, weighty
woman." But the context shows that he means those adjectives to be
read in a spiritual sense. "The liberal soul shall be made fat,"
says Solomon.

H. M.
November 1885.

THE HISTORY OF THOMAS ELLWOOD--WRITTEN BY HIMSELF

Although my station, not being so eminent either in the church of
Christ or in the world as others who have moved in higher orbs, may
not afford such considerable remarks as theirs, yet inasmuch as in
the course of my travels through this vale of tears I have passed
through various and some uncommon exercises, which the Lord hath
been graciously pleased to support me under and conduct me through,
I hold it a matter excusable at least, if not commendable, to give
the world some little account of my life, that in recounting the
many deliverances and preservations which the Lord hath vouchsafed
to work for me, both I, by a grateful acknowledgment thereof and
return of thanksgivings unto him therefor, may in some measure set
forth His abundant goodness to me, and others, whose lot it may be
to tread the same path and fall into the same or like exercises, may
be encouraged to persevere in the way of holiness, and with full
assurance of mind to trust in the Lord, whatsoever trials may befall
them.

To begin therefore with mine own beginning, I was born in the year
of our Lord 1639, about the beginning of the eighth month, so far as
I have been able to inform myself, for the parish register, which
relates to the time not of birth but of baptism, as they call it, is
not to be relied on.

The place of my birth was a little country town called Crowell,
situate in the upper side of Oxfordshire, three miles eastward from
Thame, the nearest market town.

My father's name was Walter Ellwood, and my mother's maiden name was
Elizabeth Potman, both well descended, but of declining families.
So that what my father possessed (which was a pretty estate in
lands, and more as I have heard in moneys) he received, as he had
done his name Walter, from his grandfather Walter Gray, whose
daughter and only child was his mother.

In my very infancy, when I was but about two years old, I was
carried to London; for the civil war between King and Parliament
breaking then forth, my father, who favoured the Parliament side,
though he took not arms, not holding himself safe at his country
habitation, which lay too near some garrisons of the King's, betook
himself to London, that city then holding for the Parliament.

There was I bred up, though not without much difficulty, the city
air not agreeing with my tender constitution, and there continued
until Oxford was surrendered, and the war in appearance ended.

In this time my parents contracted an acquaintance and intimate
friendship with the Lady Springett, who being then the widow of Sir
William Springett, who died in the Parliament service, was
afterwards the wife of Isaac Penington, eldest son of Alderman
Penington, of London. And this friendship devolving from the
parents to the children, I became an early and particular playfellow
to her daughter Gulielma; being admitted, as such, to ride with her
in her little coach, drawn by her footman about Lincoln's Inn
Fields.

I mention this in this place because the continuation of that
acquaintance and friendship, having been an occasional means of my
being afterwards brought to the knowledge of the blessed TRUTH, I
shall have frequent cause, in the course of the following discourse,
to make honourable mention of that family, to which I am under so
many and great obligations.

Soon after the surrender of Oxford my father returned to his estate
at Crowell, which by that time he might have need enough to look
after, having spent, I suppose, the greatest part of the moneys
which had been left him by his grandfather in maintaining himself
and his family at a high rate in London.

My elder brother (for I had one brother and two sisters, all elder
than myself) was, while we lived in London, boarded at a private
school, in the house of one Francis Atkinson, at a place called
Hadley, near Barnet, in Hertfordshire, where he had made some good
proficiency in the Latin and French tongues. But after we had left
the city, and were re-settled in the country, he was taken from that
private school and sent to the free school at Thame, in Oxfordshire.

Thither also was I sent as soon as my tender age would permit; for I
was indeed but young when I went, and yet seemed younger than I was,
by reason of my low and little stature. For it was held for some
years a doubtful point whether I should not have proved a dwarf.
But after I was arrived at the fifteenth year of my age, or
thereabouts, I began to shoot up, and gave not up growing till I had
attained the middle size and stature of men.

At this school, which at that time was in good reputation, I
profited apace, having then a natural propensity to learning; so
that at the first reading over of my lesson I commonly made myself
master of it; and yet, which is strange to think of, few boys in the
school wore out more birch than I. For though I was never, that I
remember, whipped upon the score of not having my lesson ready, or
of not saying it well, yet being a little busy boy, full of spirit,
of a working head and active hand, I could not easily conform myself
to the grave and sober rules and, as I then thought, severe orders
of the school, but was often playing one waggish prank or other
among my fellow-scholars, which subjected me to correction, so that
I have come under the discipline of the rod twice in a forenoon;
which yet brake no bones.

Had I been continued at this school, and in due time preferred to a
higher, I might in likelihood have been a scholar, for I was
observed to have a genius apt to learn. But my father having, so
soon as the republican government began to settle, accepted the
office of a justice of the peace (which was no way beneficial, but
merely honorary, and every way expensive), and put himself into a
port and course of living agreeably thereunto, and having also
removed my brother from Thame school to Merton College in Oxford,
and entered him there in the highest and most chargeable condition
of a Fellow Commoner, he found it needful to retrench his expenses
elsewhere, the hurt of which fell upon me. For he thereupon took me
from school, to save the charge of maintaining me there; which was
somewhat like plucking green fruit from the tree, and laying it by
before it was come to its due ripeness, which will thenceforth
shrink and wither, and lose that little juice and relish which it
began to have.

Even so it fared with me. For being taken home when I was but
young, and before I was well settled in my studies (though I had
made a good progress in the Latin tongue, and was entered in the
Greek) being left too much to myself, to ply or play with my books,
or without them, as I pleased, I soon shook hands with my books by
shaking my books out of my hands, and laying them by degrees quite
aside, and addicted myself to such youthful sports and pleasures as
the place afforded and my condition could reach unto.

By this means, in a little time I began to lose that little learning
I had acquired at school, and by a continued disuse of my books
became at length so utterly a stranger to learning, that I could not
have read, far less have understood, a sentence in Latin: which I
was so sensible of that I warily avoided reading to others, even in
an English book, lest, if I should meet with a Latin word, I should
shame myself by mispronouncing it.

Thus I went on, taking my swing in such vain courses as were
accounted harmless recreations, entertaining my companions and
familiar acquaintance with pleasant discourses in our conversations,
by the mere force of mother-wit and natural parts, without the help
of school cultivation; and was accounted good company too.

But I always sorted myself with persons of ingenuity, temperance,
and sobriety; for I loathed scurrilities in conversation, and had a
natural aversion to immoderate drinking. So that in the time of my
greatest vanity I was preserved from profaneness and the grosser
evils of the world, which rendered me acceptable to persons of the
best note in that country then. I often waited on the Lord Wenman
at his house, Thame Park, about two miles from Crowell, where I
lived; to whose favour I held myself entitled in a twofold respect,
both as my mother was nearly related to his lady, and as he had been
pleased to bestow his name upon me, when he made large promises for
me at the font. He was a person of great honour and virtue, and
always gave me a kind reception at his table, how often soever I
came. And I have cause to think I should have received from this
lord some advantageous preferment in this world, as soon as he had
found me capable of it (though betwixt him and my father there was
not then so good an understanding as might have been wished), had I
not been, in a little time after, called into the service of the
best and highest Lord, and thereby lost the favour of all my
friends, relations, and acquaintance of this world. To the account
of which most happy exchange I hasten, and therefore willingly pass
over many particularities of my youthful life. Yet one passage I am
willing to mention, for the effect it had upon me afterwards, which
was thus.

My father being then in the Commission of the Peace, and going to a
Petty Sessions at Watlington, I waited on him thither. And when we
came near the town, the coachman, seeing a nearer and easier way
(than the common road) through a corn-field, and that it was wide
enough for the wheels to run without damaging the corn, turned down
there; which being observed by a husbandman who was at plough not
far off, he ran to us, and stopping the coach, poured forth a
mouthful of complaints, in none of the best language, for driving
over the corn. My father mildly answered him, "That if there was an
offence committed, he must rather impute it to his servant than
himself, since he neither directed him to drive that way, nor knew
which way he drove." Yet added, "That he was going to such an inn
at the town, whither if he came he would make him full satisfaction
for whatsoever damage he had sustained thereby." And so on we went,
the man venting his discontent, as he went back, in angry accents.
At the town, upon inquiry, we understood that it was a way often
used, and without damage, being broad enough; but that it was not
the common road, which yet lay not far from it, and was also good
enough; wherefore my father bid his man drive home that way.

It was late in the evening when we returned, and very dark; and this
quarrelsome man, who had troubled himself and us in the morning,
having gotten another lusty fellow like himself to assist him,
waylaid us in the night, expecting we would return the same way we
came. But when they found we did not, but took the common way,
they, angry that they were disappointed, and loth to lose their
purpose (which was to put an abuse upon us), coasted over to us in
the dark, and laying hold on the horses' bridles, stopped them from
going on. My father, asking his man what the reason was that he
went not on, was answered, "That there were two men at the horses'
heads, who held them back, and would not suffer them to go forward."
Whereupon my father, opening the boot, stepped out, and I followed
close at his heels. Going up to the place where the men stood, he
demanded of them the meaning of this assault. They said, "We were
upon the corn." We knew by the route we were not on the corn, but
in the common way, and told them so; but they told us, "They were
resolved they would not let us go on any farther, but would make us
go back again." My father endeavoured by gentle reasoning to
persuade them to forbear, and not run themselves farther into the
danger of the law, which they were run too far into already; but
they rather derided him for it. Seeing therefore fair means would
not work upon them, he spake more roughly to them, charging them to
deliver their clubs (for each of them had a great club in his hand,
somewhat like those which are called quarter-staves): they
thereupon, laughing, told him, "They did not bring them thither for
that end." Thereupon my father, turning his head to me, said, "Tom,
disarm them."

I stood ready at his elbow, waiting only for the word of command.
For being naturally of a bold spirit, full then of youthful heat,
and that, too, heightened by the sense I had, not only of the abuse,
but insolent behaviour of those rude fellows, my blood began to
boil, and my fingers itched, as the saying is, to be dealing with
them. Wherefore, stepping boldly forward to lay hold on the staff
of him that was nearest to me, I said, "Sirrah, deliver your
weapon." He thereupon raised his club, which was big enough to have
knocked down an ox, intending no doubt to have knocked me down with
it, as probably he would have done, had I not, in the twinkling of
an eye, whipped out my rapier, and made a pass upon him. I could
not have failed running of him through up to the hilt had he stood
his ground, but the sudden and unexpected sight of my bright blade
glittering in the dark night, did so amaze and terrify the man,
that, slipping aside, he avoided my thrust, and letting his staff
sink, betook himself to his heels for safety; which his companion
seeing, fled also. I followed the former as fast as I could, but
timor addidit alas (fear gave him wings), and made him swiftly fly;
so that, although I was accounted very nimble, yet the farther we
ran the more ground he gained on me; so that I could not overtake
him, which made me think he took shelter under some bush, which he
knew where to find, though I did not. Meanwhile, the coachman, who
had sufficiently the outside of a man, excused himself from
intermeddling under pretence that he durst not leave his horses, and
so left me to shift for myself; and I was gone so far beyond my
knowledge, that I understood not which way I was to go, till by
halloing, and being halloed to again, I was directed where to find
my company.

We had easy means to have found out who these men were (the
principal of them having been in the daytime at the inn, and both
quarrelled with the coachman, and threatened to be even with him
when he went back); but since they came off no better in their
attempt, my father thought it better not to know them, than to
oblige himself to a prosecution of them.

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