xxin PUBLIC FRIENDS AND WAR . 295 



earlier Friends. Edward Bur rough in 1656 charged the 

 soldiers in Ireland to use their swords justly, and even wrote 

 to the army at Dunkirk in 1659 that ^ should avenge the 

 blood of the guiltless. 



War in a just cause Barclay held to be not altogether 

 unlawful to a magistrate whose conscience was not fully 

 enlightened. Penington said that " the present estate of 

 things," in which the earthly spirit prevails, might require 

 the use of the sword, and a blessing would attend its right use ; 

 but, he added, there is a better state. There were indeed 

 occasions in the great struggle for liberty which was waging 

 in England at the time of the rise of Friends, when they were 

 asked to give active help to the parliamentary forces, and 

 when some of the best amongst them hesitated as to their 

 duty. But Fox and others stood firm : no carnal weapons 

 were to be borne : Friends were not to join the militia ; the 

 testimony of the society against all war was clear and em- 

 phatic. Several of its early leaders Dewsbury, Hubber- 

 thorne, Nayler and others had come out from the ranks of 

 the army to serve the Prince of Peace, in the Kingdom which 

 is " righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." 



But whilst it was the clear duty of the Friend in his personal 

 conduct and on his own behalf to deny all war, the position 

 was less easy for those who held places of responsibility in the 

 community on behalf of their fellows ; and such offices were 

 held, as we have seen, by early members of the society in 

 America. The sturdy Quaker governors of Rhode Island 

 thought it their duty to the people who had elected them that 

 they should assent to preparations for the military defence of 

 the colony. John Archdale, governor of the Carolinas, held 

 a commission which nominally appointed him Admiral and 

 Commander-in-Chief. The Assembly passed a Militia Act 

 during his term of office, under which all Quakers were excused 

 from service, who, in the judgment of the governor, refused 

 to bear arms on a conscientious principle of religion. 1 These 

 Friend governors did not, as it appears, engage in war, nor 

 were they, on the other hand, subjected to disownment by 

 their own body. They seem to have taken the view that, 

 although all war was evil, a defensive war might on occasion 

 be a necessary accompaniment of civil government, when that 

 government was exercised on behalf of a mixed population 

 only partly enlightened ; and that in the public office they 

 held they did right to connive at it. A citizen cannot act 



1 Archdale, op. cit. preface. 



