William Edmundson

234 Pages·1991·2.1 MB·English

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FRIEND WILLIAM EDMUNDSON
1627
William Edmundson was born in England to John and Grace Edmundson, the youngest child of six. His mother
would die when he was about four years old and his father would die when he was about eight, these six
children being left in the care of brother of their mother, “who used us hardly.” Eventually William was bound
as an apprentice in York to the trade of carpenter and joiner. He would remain an apprentice in that trade until
entering the army of the Parliament during the English Civil War.
1650
The English carpenter’s apprentice from York William Edmundson arrived in Ireland as part of the
Parliamentary army of Oliver Cromwell. He was not yet a Quaker.
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1651
September 3, Wednesday (Old Style): King Charles II had invaded England from Scotland but was defeated by troops
from Ireland under Oliver Cromwell at the battle of Worcester. Colonel William Goffe commanded a regiment
of Parliamentary forces at this battle.The monarch would be reduced to hiding in a recently lopped pollard oak
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tree at Boscobel in Shropshire.
REGICIDE
1. Some there are who regard this as having been the high point of English monarchy. Shame on them.
Polling or pollarding is the cutting of a tree’s branches regularly at the top of a 2-3 meter trunk. Most species of broadleaf trees will
form pollards. Trees were pollarded to produce repeated crops of small-sized wood. When fresh shoots grew out of the top of the
trunk they would be safely out off reach of browsing animals such as cattle and deer. The poles produced were used in much the
same way as the coppice, and the shoots and foliage were cut for supplementary animal fodder. Pollarding was typical in deer parks
and on common land or wood pasture. Trees on stream-sides and riverbanks were often pollarded. Trees were re-cut every 5-35
years depending on the species and what the pieces collected were to be used for. Pollarded trees can survive for centuries.
Nowadays pollarding is mainly done for landscape and conservation reasons and on street trees. The practice has fallen into disuse,
leaving ancient overgrown and topheavy pollards scattered through the landscape.
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This painter, however, considered that it would make a prettier picture, to depict him just before that battle:
After his evasion of capture by hiding in this tree, Charles would escape to France. The Parliamentary army
would pass on to subdue the Isle of Man and, returning to the mainland, quarter in Derbyshire at Chesterfield
and the towns thereabout. It would be at this point that soldier William Edmundson would first encountered
Quakers.
One market day at Chesterfield, I was in a tavern with others
of my companions and two women of the people called Quakers spoke
of the things of God to the people in the market. I did not hear
of them until they were gone, but the priest of the town, and
several with him, abused them. When they had done, they came to
the tavern and into the room where I and my companions were, it
being a large dining-room. And the priest boasted of what he had
done to the two women, thinking we would praise him. But I loved
to hear of the women and hated his behavior towards them.
A young man, a merchant, then present, who frequented my company
and would often speak of the people called Quakers and say that
their principles were the truth, hearing the priest boast of his
abusive behavior to the said two women, answered and said that
it was a poor victory he had gotten over two poor women. At this
the priest was very angry and began to storm. My spirit rose
against him. I started up from my seat and asked the priest and
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them with him if they came to quarrel, saying that if they did,
they should have enough. The priest answered, “No, not with you
sir.” I bid them leave the room, which they immediately did. But
these things came close to me, and the more I heard of this
people, the better I loved them. And earnest desires sprung
afresh in my heart that the Lord would show me the way of truth.
RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
1652
The Parliamentary soldier William Edmundson rode into Derbyshire and married a young woman, to whom
he had been contracted before. After some time he and his wife determined to relocate to Ireland, and got off
the boat in the port of Dublin not long after the plague.
During this period, finally, through a negotiated agreement between Lord Protector Cromwell and King
Charles I’s advocate, Lawrence Wilkinson was allowed to find refuge in Providence, Rhode Island. He and his
wife Susanna Smith Wilkinson, daughter of Christopher Smith, would have sons Joseph Wilkinson, born on
March 2, 1654, Samuel Wilkinson, and John Wilkinson, and daughters Susanna Wilkinson, born on March 9,
1652; Joanna Wilkinson, born on March 2, 1657, and Susanna Wilkinson (again), born during February 1662.
(It would be, presumably, this youngest son John Wilkinson who would become a grandfather of Jemimah
Wilkinson, the “Publik Universal Friend” of Rhode Island, and also an ancestor of Oziel Wilkinson the metal
worker of Pawtucket.)
WILKINSON FAMILY
At the culmination of the rebellion which had begun in 1641 in Ireland, after eleven years of intense hostilities,
the island had been stripped and was “void as a wilderness.” The half of the people who had attempted to
oppose Cromwell who were still alive were reduced to eating human flesh, when they were not consuming
carrion. The victorious English colonists brought about the sale by drovers and other intermediaries of some
35,000 to 40,000 defeated Irish warriors, to the armies of foreign powers. This “transplantation” was in all
particulars an Irish slave trade “to Hell or Connaught” begun after the remaining Irish had been forced to move
west of the River Shannon. By and large these men would be able to continue in the status of soldier, albeit by
serving a foreign master in a foreign clime, except for some unfortunate number of the more intransigent ones,
probably somewhat less than a thousand, who could not be trusted with their weapons but would instead need
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to be reduced as common laborers on the sugar-cane plantations of the West Indies. As all these thousands
upon thousands of defeated warriors were being transshipped out of Irish ports, some 6,000 Irish Catholic
priests, Irish Catholic women, and Irish Catholic boys were in addition sent along with them for free, in order
to be disposed of them locally, without any separate record being maintained of these civilian auxiliaries. This
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Irish slave trade would not be brought to a completion until 1657.
INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE
W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: In 1652 Rhode Island passed a law
designed to prohibit life slavery in the colony. It declared
that “Whereas, there is a common course practised amongst
2. As a footnote, a pointy reminder by Theodore W. Allen: “It is only a ‘white’ habit of mind that reserves ‘slave’ for the African-
American and boggles at the term ‘Irish slave trade’.”
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English men to buy negers, to that end they may have them for
service or slaves forever; for the preventinge of such practices
among us, let it be ordered, that no blacke mankind or white
being forced by covenant bond, or otherwise, to serve any man
or his assighnes longer than ten yeares, or untill they come to
bee twentie four yeares of age, if they bee taken in under
fourteen, from the time of their cominge within the liberties
of this Collonie. And at the end or terme of ten yeares to sett
them free, as the manner is with the English servants. And that
man that will not let them goe free, or shall sell them away
elsewhere, to that end that they may bee enslaved to others for
a long time, hee or they shall forfeit to the Collonie forty
4
pounds.”
5
This law was for a time enforced, but by the beginning of the
eighteenth century it had either been repealed or become a dead
letter; for the Act of 1708 recognized perpetual slavery, and
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laid an impost of £3 on Negroes imported. This duty was really
a tax on the transport trade, and produced a steady income for
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twenty years. From the year 1700 on, the citizens of this State
engaged more and more in the carrying trade, until Rhode Island
became the greatest slave-trader in America. Although she did
not import many slaves for her own use, she became the clearing-
house for the trade of other colonies. Governor Cranston, as
early as 1708, reported that between 1698 and 1708 one hundred
and three vessels were built in the State, all of which were
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trading to the West Indies and the Southern colonies. They took
out lumber and brought back molasses, in most cases making a
slave voyage in between. From this, the trade grew. Samuel
Hopkins, about 1770, was shocked at the state of the trade: more
than thirty distilleries were running in the colony, and one
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hundred and fifty vessels were in the slave-trade. “Rhode
Island,” said he, “has been more deeply interested in the slave-
trade, and has enslaved more Africans than any other colony in
New England.” Later, in 1787, he wrote: “The inhabitants of
Rhode Island, especially those of Newport, have had by far the
greater share in this traffic, of all these United States. This
trade in human species has been the first wheel of commerce in
Newport, on which every other movement in business has chiefly
depended. That town has been built up, and flourished in times
past, at the expense of the blood, the liberty, and happiness
3. When the proposal was recently made by a black reverend in Providence, Rhode Island that we should now remove the word
“plantation” from the official state name “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” on grounds that such a word honored the state’s
history of human slavery, some white clown-in-denial wrote to the ProJo local newspaper and insisted that while indeed there had
been slavery in Rhode Island, the local historical “slaves” (this clown, or the clowning newspaper editor of the clownish ProJo
newspaper, had put the term inside scarequotes) had been merely white people such as the Irish warriors who had been indentured
as slaves for a period of ten years. Nothing for us to be ashamed of, he trumpeted informedly!
INDENTURE
4. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, I. 240.
5. Cf. letter written in 1681: NEW ENGLAND REGISTER, XXXI. 75-6. Cf. also Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, I. 240.
6. The text of this act is lost (COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 34; Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 31). The Acts of Rhode Island
were not well preserved, the first being published in Boston in 1719. Perhaps other whole acts are lost.
7. E.g., it was expended to pave the streets of Newport, to build bridges, etc.: RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 191-3, 225.
8. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 55-60.
9. Patten, REMINISCENCES OF SAMUEL HOPKINS (1843), page 80.
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of the poor Africans; and the inhabitants have lived on this,
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and by it have gotten most of their wealth and riches.”
The Act of 1708 was poorly enforced. The “good intentions” of
its framers “were wholly frustrated” by the clandestine “hiding
and conveying said negroes out of the town [Newport] into the
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country, where they lie concealed.” The act was accordingly
strengthened by the Acts of 1712 and 1715, and made to apply to
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importations by land as well as by sea. The Act of 1715,
however, favored the trade by admitting African Negroes free of
duty. The chaotic state of Rhode Island did not allow England
often to review her legislation; but as soon as the Act of 1712
came to notice it was disallowed, and accordingly repealed in
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1732. Whether the Act of 1715 remained, or whether any other
duty act was passed, is not clear.
While the foreign trade was flourishing, the influence of the
Friends and of other causes eventually led to a movement against
slavery as a local institution. Abolition societies multiplied,
and in 1770 an abolition bill was ordered by the Assembly, but
14
it was never passed. Four years later the city of Providence
resolved that “as personal liberty is an essential part of the
natural rights of mankind,” the importation of slaves and the
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system of slavery should cease in the colony. This movement
finally resulted, in 1774, in an act “prohibiting the
importation of Negroes into this Colony,” — a law which
curiously illustrated the attitude of Rhode Island toward the
slave-trade. The preamble of the act declared: “Whereas, the
inhabitants of America are generally engaged in the preservation
of their own rights and liberties, among which, that of personal
freedom must be considered as the greatest; as those who are
desirous of enjoying all the advantages of liberty themselves,
should be willing to extend personal liberty to others; —
Therefore,” etc. The statute then proceeded to enact “that for
the future, no negro or mulatto slave shall be brought into this
colony; and in case any slave shall hereafter be brought in, he
or she shall be, and are hereby, rendered immediately free....”
The logical ending of such an act would have been a clause
prohibiting the participation of Rhode Island citizens in the
slave-trade. Not only was such a clause omitted, but the
following was inserted instead: “Provided, also, that nothing
in this act shall extend, or be deemed to extend, to any negro
or mulatto slave brought from the coast of Africa, into the West
Indies, on board any vessel belonging to this colony, and which
negro or mulatto slave could not be disposed of in the West
Indies, but shall be brought into this colony. Provided, that
the owner of such negro or mulatto slave give bond ... that such
10. Hopkins, WORKS (1854), II. 615.
11. Preamble of the Act of 1712.
12. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 131-5, 138, 143, 191-3.
13. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 471.
14. Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 304, 321, 337. For a probable copy of the bill, see NARRAGANSETT HISTORICAL
REGISTER, II. 299.
15. A man dying intestate left slaves, who became thus the property of the city; they were freed, and the town made the above
resolve, May 17, 1774, in town meeting: Staples, ANNALS OF PROVIDENCE (1843), page 236.
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negro or mulatto slave shall be exported out of the colony,
within one year from the date of such bond; if such negro or
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mulatto be alive, and in a condition to be removed.”
In 1779 an act to prevent the sale of slaves out of the State
17 18
was passed, and in 1784, an act gradually to abolish slavery.
Not until 1787 did an act pass to forbid participation in the
slave-trade. This law laid a penalty of £100 for every slave
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transported and £1000 for every vessel so engaged.
16. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, VII. 251-2.
17. BARTLETT’S INDEX, page 329; Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 444; RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, VIII. 618.
18. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, X. 7-8; Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 506.
19. BARTLETT’S INDEX, page 333; NARRAGANSETT HISTORICAL REGISTER, II. 298-9. The number of slaves in Rhode Island has
been estimated as follows: —
In 1708, 426. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 59.
In 1730, 1,648. RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL TRACTS, No. 19, pt. 2, page 99.
In 1749, 3,077. Williams, HISTORY OF THE NEGRO RACE IN AMERICA, I. 281.
In 1756, 4,697. Williams, HISTORY OF THE NEGRO RACE IN AMERICA, I. 281.
In 1774, 3,761. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, VII. 253.
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1653
During the first part of this year New Amsterdam, because Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell had declared war
upon the Dutch Republic, busied itself in the erection of a defensive wall across Manhattan to the north of the
white settlement, guarding themselves against any English militias, or native American war parties, that might
approach from that direction.
It is clear that John Smith was not only able “to beare arms,” but also willing to do so despite his marriage to
a Quaker woman — because in this year he served as an officer aboard a “barque” which the militia of
Plymouth sent to fight the Dutch at “Manhatoes.” (It is not clear that there was any actual contact.)
Under the Act of Settlement, Parliament’s opponents in Ireland were stripped of their estates.
While on a trip from his home in Ireland to England, William Edmundson was convinced by Friend James
Nayler to become a Quaker.
James Naylor was having a meeting about three miles from where
I was. I went to it with my eldest brother Thomas and another
kinsman, having an earnest desire to converse with some of that
people, retaining a love for and believing well of them from the
first hearing the report of them. And I was glad of this
opportunity. We were all three convinced of the Lord’s blessed
truth, for God’s witness in our hearts answered to the truth of
what was spoken, and the Lord’s former dealings with me came
fresh into my remembrance. Then I knew it was the Lord’s hand
that had been striving with me for a long time. This was in the
year 1653.
Then my understanding began to be opened and many Scriptures
were brought to my remembrance, which I had often read and yet
understood not. But now being turned to a measure of the Lord’s
Spirit manifested in my heart which often had reproved me for
evil in my ignorance, I knew that it was he which led into all
truth, agreeably to the holy Scriptures of the law and prophets
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and Christ and his apostles. And I thought that all that heard
it declared must own it, it was so plain to me. A few days after
I was thus far convinced of the blessed truth, the Lord’s power
seized upon me through his Spirit, whereby I was brought under
great exercises of mind. Yea, all my parts came under this
exercise, for the Lord’s hand was mighty upon me in judgments
mixed with mercies, so that my former ways were hedged up. But
I loved the Lord’s judgments, for I knew I had sinned against
him and must be purged through judgment. And though under this
exercise of conscience towards God, yet I did my business in
England and shipped my goods to be landed at Carrickfergus or
Belfast.
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1654
Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, striving to overthrow the Spanish power in the West Indies, fitted out large
naval and military forces under Admiral Penn and General Venables and sent them to Jamaica to operate
against Hispaniola. He named a board of three commissioners, with controlling authority, of which Edward
Winslow became the head.
With Ireland’s armies in defeat and exile, the only mounted persons on the island were English soldiers.
To the English ruling class Ireland was a tabula rasa on which it
could inscribe what it would.
At about this point one of these English soldiers, Friend William Edmundson, got on his horse and visited two
Quaker families in Rosenallis in county Laois in Ireland, apparently the Cantrill family of Tineil and the
Chander family of Ballyhide.
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