ix FRIENDS AND THE REBELLION OF 1745 83 



and had to meet rebellion at home, the army of the 

 Young Pretender penetrating as far as Derby. The 

 people formed public associations for providing men, 

 horses and arms, as well as large subscriptions of money 

 to enable the government to meet the crisis. The ancient 

 testimony of Friends forbade their being concerned in 

 these warlike preparations, but some of them, moved 

 with loyalty to the king and bis cause, raised funds for 

 a large supply of warm clothing for the soldiers, for it 

 was in the depth of a severe winter. 1 It is stated, on 

 doubtful authority, that Fothergill, then a young man, 

 took an active part in this work. In the Meeting for 

 Sufferings he firmly upheld Friends' testimony against 

 war, and was prime mover in the issuing of a paper very 

 uncompromising in its tone. In the next year, 1746, 

 after the rebellion had been quelled, the Meeting issued 

 an Address to King George II., couched in language of 

 fulsome congratulation on the result ; perhaps a solitary 

 instance of such congratulation in the public documents 

 of Friends. The first draft of the paper was referred back 

 to the Committee which had prepared it, and of which 

 Fothergill was a member : on its revision it was passed 

 unanimously. Later addresses to royalty, as in 1760 

 and 1775, in which Fothergill seems to have had a leading 

 part, are of a different tenor. 2 



There was need, too, of surgical help for the soldiers, 

 and Dimsdale, having lately lost his first wife, Mary 



1 It is said that 10,000 woollen waistcoats, ample and double-breasted, 

 were provided by the Friends in four or five days. See Gent. Mag. and 

 Longstaffe, History of Darlington. 



2 MS. Minutes of Meeting for Sufferings, 1745 and 1746. R. M. Jones, 

 Quakers in American Colonies, p. 360 ; M. E. Hirst, Frds. Quart. Exam., 1918, 

 p. 300. The Address of 1746 has lately been reprinted. In a letter (16.4.1746) 

 to Eliza Bartlett, afterwards the wife of Henry Gurney, which is among 

 the Dimsdale MSS., Fothergill, who had lately returned from Scarborough, 

 writes of having passed Lord Lovat several times upon the road ; when that 

 aged Highland rebel, sick in body but still stout of heart, was being carried 

 up to London. At Leicester, his party lodged in the same house, " where," 

 says Fothergill, " I found means of procuring Friend Barnard and her com- 

 panion to be admitted into his room," doubtless on a religious visit. He was 

 on his way to the Tower for trial and execution. The letter adds, "It is 

 amazing how eager people are to see the shocking spectacle. Scaffolds and 

 stands are erecting all about Tower Hill, and half a guinea per head given for 

 places." To view it, he concludes, " I would not be hired." 



