Title tenth month (2 resultados)

Single leaf broadside. Printed in double columns. Upper left-hand corner partially cut away. An apparently unrecorded provincially published broadside relating a curious, and frankly likely spurious, occurrence in a Yorkshire wood. Whilst travelling through said wood, the Reverend Dr. Clark of Doncaster perceived 'a musical harmony, which bore a heavenly sound'. Unable to ascertain the source of the celestial chords, Clark enlisted the assistance of the minister of the parish. The pair returned to the wood and, once more detecting the melodious sounds, eventually happened upon their origin; a cave concealed behind a door 'artfully made with green boughs interwoven into each other'. Inside, the gentlemen were shocked to discover two wizened men 'whose silver beards hung down to the leather girdles they had about their lions'. The old men, who claimed to have been residing underground for several years, had no knowledge of the music which had revealed their location. The Reverend Clark took this as the providential working of the Almighty 'to direct them to these sages should be found out'. The two men were taken before local magistrates and proceeded to delivered portents of doom, 'related to them by angels', claiming that 'there would be great sickness in several parts of the kingdom' and 'a bad harvest in the North'. Discovered on the '10th of last month' the pair both expired on the '23d of the same month'. Records show versions of this narrative, published in chapbook form, dated to the closing decades of the eighteenth century. Size: Dimensions 190 x 300 mm.…

A rare broadside concerning the so-called "Quaker exiles," the Philadelphia Friends who were rounded up, held without hearing, and banished to the Virginia frontier in 17771778, during the height of the American Revolution. Signed in type by clerk Isaac Jackson on behalf of the Yearly Meeting, the broadside calls for the release of "A Number of our Friends" who have recently "been imprisoned and banished, unheard, from their Families, under a Charge and Insinuation that 'they have in their general Conduct and Conversation evidenced a Disposition inimical to the Cause of America.'" When war broke out between Britain and its North American colonies, many Quakers remained steadfast in their religious commitment to pacifist principles, refusing to pay taxes, bear arms, or take oaths of allegiance on behalf of the Patriot cause. This pacifism was met with suspicion by American Revolutionaries, who accused Quakers of secretly supporting the British. In August and September 1777, with Philadelphia under imminent threat of capture by the enemy, Quakers became the victims of growing persecution. Patriot suspicions were seemingly confirmed when, on August 25, 1777, the Continental Congress received a letter from Major-General John Sullivan reporting the discovery of several documents, signed "the Spank-town Yearly-Meeting," implicating the Society of Friends in passing sensitive military information to the British. Never mind that no such Meeting at Spanktown existed or that the documents were likely fabricated by someone intent on maligning Quakers. The letter, together with the incriminating documents, were immediately referred to a committee, which, in its report, concluded that the actions of "a number of [Quakers] of considerable wealth.render it certain and notorious, that those persons are, with much rancour and bitterness, disaffected to the American cause" and that, since those persons might be inclined "to communicate intelligence to the enemy, and, in various other ways, to injure the councils and arms of America," they therefore ought to be considered a risk "to the public safety" (Ford). The committee recommended that "the executive powers of the respective states.apprehend and secure all persons, as well among the people called Quakers as others, who have, in their general conduct and conversation, evidenced a disposition inimical to the cause of America" (Ford). On August 28, the Congress approved the committee's recommendation. Three days later, on August 31, the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, in response to the resolution in Congress, called for the arrest of forty-one people, among them some of the city's most prominent and wealthy Quakers. Following their arrest in early September, the prisoners were held for several days at the Philadelphia Masonic Lodge, pending their removal to Virginia. The prisoners were offered release on condition that they swear (or affirm) allegiance to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but some refused. On September 10, the twenty remaining prisoners, nearly all of them either Quakers or disowned former Quakers, were banished from Philadelphia and sent to the Virginia frontier. En route, the exiles were granted writs of habeas corpus by Chief Justice Thomas McKean of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but these were denied. The next day the Pennsylvania Assembly passed a bill suspending habeas corpus entirely. The prisoners arrived in Winchester, Virginia, on September 29. They were released the following April in the face of mounting public pressure, but only after two had died in exile. The present broadside is a product of the "extensive publishing campaign" that helped secure the Quaker exiles' release (Whidbee). The broadside serves first to reiterate the Friends' position of pacifism and neutrality, to remind the public that Quakers "are led out of all Wars and Fightings by the Principle of Grace and Truth in our own Minds, by which we are restrained either as private Members of Society, or in any of our Meetings, from holding a Correspondence with either Army." The authors explain that Quakers are called "to spread the Testimony of Truth and the peaceable Doctrines of Christ, to seek the good of all." They then go on to address the fabricated documents recently discovered by the Continental Army and to combat the resulting spread of misinformation: "As to a nameless Paper lately published, said to be dated at Spank-Town Yearly-Meeting, and found among the Baggage on Staten-Island, every Person who is acquainted with our Stile, may be convinced it was never wrote at any of our Meetings, or by any of our Friends." The authors go on to note that "there is no Meeting throughout our whole Society of that Name; nor was that Letter, or any one like it, ever wrote in any of our Meetings since we were a People." Finally, the Yearly Meeting pleads for the release of "our banished Friends," who, they insist, "have done nothing to forfeit their just Right to Liberty." OCLC locates at least six copies, at Yale University, the Society of the Cincinnati, the Friends Historical Library, Florida Atlantic University, the Library of Congress, and Princeton University. Additionally, we find one copy at Brown University and two at the Library Company of Philadelphia. A rare broadside marking an important moment in the history of civil liberty, religious freedom, habeas corpus, and conscientious objection in America. SABIN 94920. EVANS 15302. HILDEBURN 3638. SMITH, FRIENDS' BOOKS I, p.762. ESTC W5972. OCLC 1365079001, 27103627, 1268543044. Jack D. Marietta, The Reformation of American Quakerism, 17481783 (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), pp.240-44. Arthur J. Mekeel, "The Relation of the Quakers to the American Revolution" in Quaker History, Vol. 65, no. 1 (Spring 1976), pp.3-18. Robert F. Oaks, "Philadelphians in Exile: The Problem of Loyalty during the American Revolution" in Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 96, no. 3.…