n THE FOTHERGILL STOCK 7 



thither alone bearing his mittimus with him. After some 

 months he died in the prison of a fever. 



From Westmorland, one John Fothergill is said to 

 have migrated eastward to Wensleydale soon after the 

 year 1600. He may well have come from Castlethwaite 

 in Mallerstang, under the dark mass of Wild Boar Fell ; 

 there were Fothergills here dwelling on their own land 

 until recent times. In 1652 George Fox visited the 

 neighbourhood. " I came upp Wensydale," he writes 

 in his Journal, " & after passt uppe ye dales, warninge 

 people to feare God & declaring his truth to y m ... & 

 some was convinced & stands to this day." In fact the 

 Quaker faith was well received by the dalesmen, and 

 this district became a stronghold of the Friends. Men 

 of independent mind, prone to contemplate and to turn 

 inward, they cherished here an unfettered conscience, 

 bearing fruit in pure and steadfast lives and in the kindly 

 help of their brethren. If the bleak lonely hills and 

 inexorable skies ministered to a deep faith in the unseen, 

 is it wonder if sometimes that faith was a little stern, a 

 little chill ? ! 



1 Drake, Eboracum, p. 217 ; J. H.Tuke, Sketch of J. Fothergill; C. Thornton, 

 etc., The Fothergills of Ravenstonedale ; The First Publishers of Truth, ed. 

 by N. Penney, pp. 162, 248, 272 ; Swarthmore MSS. Transcript, iv. 364 ; 

 Geo. Fox, Journal, Camb. Ed. i. 40, 41. From the Westmorland Fothergills 

 have come not a few men of learning and ability. Thomas Fothergill, master 

 of St. John's College, Cambridge, founded in 1668 a free school in Ravenstone- 

 dale. Anthony Fothergill of Brownber, who died 1761, was a theological 

 writer and a man of " integrity of heart." George Fothergill, D.D. (b. 1705, 

 d. 1760), was Principal of St. Edmund's Hall, Oxford ; and his brother Thomas, 

 born 1715, was Provost of Queen's College, Oxford, from 1767 to his death 

 in 1796. The latter was a learned and singular man " Old Customary " 

 was his familiar name he would not, it is said, " have been seen abroad 

 minus his wig and gown for a dukedom." The tale is told that when the 

 college was devastated by a fire in 1778, and Mrs. Fothergill and the family 

 had with difficulty escaped the flames, the doctor could nowhere be found, 

 until at the last he emerged from the burning pile, full dressed as usual, having 

 stayed to robe at the risk of his life. See Letters of R. Raddiffe and John 

 James, ed. by M. Evans, Oxford Hist. Soc., 1888, p. 269. Elizabeth Gaunt, 

 the Anabaptist martyr, and the last woman to be burnt at the stake in England 

 (1685), was a Fothergill of Ravenstonedale. Of Anthony Fothergill, M.D., 

 an account will be given in another chapter. John Milner Fothergill, M.D., 

 Edin., 1865, was a physician in Henrietta Street, London. He was born in 

 1841 and died in 1888 ; his works on Digitalis and other therapeutical topics 

 are well known. The Milner Fothergill Gold Medal of the University of 

 Edinburgh was instituted in his memory. Sir William Fothergill Cooke 

 (died 1879), one of the inventors of the electric telegraph, owned a maternal 



