Church Order and Discipline
The Friends organized their Society hierarchically and directed it centrally.[15] At the base stood the local meetings for discipline and worship. The former consisted of "preparative meetings"; these were organized separately by gender and were used to monitor the moral condition of members. Meetings for worship were held jointly, and nonmembers were permitted to attend. The Friends held meetings for worship three times during the week and twice on Sunday and held meetings for discipline at least once a month on the Sunday prior to the regional monthly meeting. Members were expected to answer the "Queries," a kind of catechism formulated by higher authorities, during meetings for discipline. The national Yearly Meeting outlined the procedure in 1757 for the women's Quarterly Meeting of Gloucester:
the answers [to the queries] of such preparative meetings [should] be delivered to the respective Monthly Meetings next ensuing, & a general answer from each Monthly Meeting [should] be drawn up in writeing [sic ] and delivered into the Quarterly Meeting.[16]
Altogether, then, meetings for discipline and worship constituted the "particular meeting" or local chapter of the Society.
The particular meeting elected representatives to the monthly regional meeting, the Society's next highest body, which also met separately according to gender. The meeting surveyed the condition of the membership at the local level by collecting answers to the queries and writing a report based on them for the Quarterly Meeting and investigating specific violations of the Society's rules. The minute books of the Monthly Meeting, in fact, provide
detailed accounts of the business, and especially the discipline, of the Society.
The Quarterly Meeting encompassed an even wider region and heard appeals from members challenging the decisions of the Monthly Meeting. It collected reports forwarded from the Monthly Meetings and sent a more generalized summary of them to the Society's Yearly Meeting in London. Conversely, it communicated to the lower bodies any changes in the Society's rules effected at the Yearly Meeting. Finally, the Quarterly Meeting elected a "General Committee" to coordinate its activities with those of the lower bodies, especially "in the maintenance, education, or apprenticing [of] its poor members actually requiring such aid."[17]
The activities of the two meetings and the General Committee were administered by a hierarchy of officials who aided in the enforcement of discipline. These included ministers, elders, and overseers of particular meetings. Elders, who included women, were elected at Monthly Meetings and acted as lay leaders. In theory they were supposed to supervise the ministry, but the post "was . . . more honorific, and tended to be regarded as a compensatory status symbol for affluent . . . Friends."[18] Each particular meeting appointed overseers who ensured "when anything appears amiss, that the rules of our discipline be put in practice."[19] Members joined the ministry voluntarily, but such commitment required an especially superior "disposition . . . to piety and virtue" that all Friends could acknowledge.[20]
The Quakers eschewed a professional ministry and instead adhered to the theory of spontaneous inspiration. Although all members qualified for the office in principle, only those men and women who "spoke fairly often . . . and proved acceptable" actually occupied it.[21] Frequent speakers were "recorded" and distinguished from the rest of the meeting by seatings in a frontal gallery. Those who spoke less often but wished to join the ministry were inhibited only by "a difficult psychological barrier."[22]
In theory, all "stations of the church" were to be assumed from a sense of humility and even self-abnegation. Ministers, especially, were to assume their duties in a spirit of self-sacrifice, in emulation of the passion of Christ,[23] and for this reason the Society did not provide them with a maintenance. Quaker humility and other-
worldliness formally contrasted with the grandeur and authoritarianism of the Church of England. As attributes of "saintliness," however, Quaker attitudes contributed paradoxically to defining a distinctive hierarchy within the Society.[24] Indeed, the "stations of the church" represented a genuine structure of authority, reinforced by the system of indirect elections to the Society's higher bodies and by the manner in which directives were communicated to the lower ones. This form of church order was "presbyterian" in character[25] and stood in sharp contrast to the congregational-ism of the Forest Green and Shortwood churches. Quaker church order, in other words, facilitated control by an elite; the officers of higher bodies could not be held responsible to the local membership, and it was no easy matter to appeal their decisions.
This system did not become established, however, without opposition from the local membership. The persistent weakness of the Nailsworth particular meeting, the continual indiscipline of its membership, was in part the expression of a democratic protest against creeping bureaucratization. In 1754 the Women's Meeting at Nailsworth took special note of "the repeated advice of the Yearly Meeting at London that Elders should be appointed to take the oversight of the Flock [and] Overseers to advise the Friends where they see anything amiss."[26] The minutes record further local resistance to bureaucratization in December 1790 when the Quarterly Meeting "declined the practice of receiving representatives from the particular meetings and directed in future that appointments of representatives be at several Monthly Meetings only. . . . The particular meetings are accordingly deseired [sic ] to decline in future making such appointments."[27]
Thus, by resisting the tutelage imposed by elders and overseers and by demanding direct representation to the higher church bodies, local Friends demonstrated their democratic inclinations. Their failure to realize democracy created demoralization, however, which led to a decline in membership.[28] As a concession, however, the Yearly Meeting introduced a provision in 1806 to allow appeal of Monthly and Quarterly Meeting decisions to a special disinterested tribunal. The reform sought to diffuse discontent by providing a grievance procedure, but the tribunal retained the right to refuse a hearing,[29] and the situation at Nailsworth did not improve significantly after its implementation.
Another aspect of the movement for greater church democracy concerned the status of women. Geoffrey Nuttall has noted that in the seventeenth century Quakers were more advanced than other Dissenters in allowing women to hold office, although this leniency was confined to the ministry and only very slowly came to include participation in business meetings.[30] In 1823 Amelia Davis, who "appeared in the ministry among us," was nominated to membership in the select "meeting of ministers and elders."[31] Yet the men's meeting had to appoint a commitee of women "to consider the propriety of recommending her"; the men clearly had retained the dominant role.[32]
In numerous matters of discipline that involved women (especially cases associated with marriage), the men always directed the women's meeting to make visitations and submit reports. This pattern created tensions that probably never were fully alleviated despite attempts to settle the matter. In 1819 the Yearly Meeting, alluding to these difficulties, rendered the following judgment:
This meeting being informed that . . . there is a diversity of sentiment, whether any reference should be had to the women Friends in the answers to the men's queries, think it right to express its judgement that the answers from the men's meeting are intended to refer to the state and conduct of the whole body.[33]
In general, the growth of bureaucracy greatly contributed to the Society's numerical decline; although Quaker authoritarianism affected all members, it contained a significant gender bias as well.
The severity of Quaker discipline, through the regularity of expulsions, complemented the growth of bureaucracy in contributing to membership loss. At the same time, the Society judged candidates for membership according to highly rigorous standards, which made recruitment of outsiders especially difficult. The children of members, or of former members who remained within the Society's orbit, and offspring of "mixed marriages" were usually the only ones granted membership. Recruitment, therefore, remained largely kinship based, although in theory membership was open to anyone capable of showing agreement with Quaker principles and customs.
Quaker discipline meant to ensure that Friends conformed to the profession of faith that defined membership in the Society. It is
paradoxical that a church, which placed such great emphasis on the independence of the Holy Spirit in its operations on the soul, should have made formal conduct so important a test of spirituality. Richard Gilkes, a Quaker minister from Nailsworth, complained "how much the principles of Friends were misrepresented by those who said we relied upon our own works for salvation."[34] Yet only by "works" could the truth, in practice, become manifest. Thus the Monthly Meeting spent most of its time enforcing proper conduct. The frequency distribution of offenses for which members were punished during 1754-1854, including induced resignations, is as follows: marriage by a priest, eighteen; bankruptcy, seven; paying tithes, two; "misconduct," eight; resignations, four; and doctrinal expulsions, 1.
Discipline I: Courtship, Marriage, and Kinship
The most common offense committed was "marriage by a priest to a person not of our Society." The disciplinarians invoked this phrase routinely. "Marriage by a priest" violated the testimony against a "hireling ministry,"[35] a view of episcopacy that expressed the most radical Protestant tendencies of the Reformation. "To a person not of our Society" referred to a violation of the rule prohibiting "mixed marriage" that the Quakers rigorously enforced. This rule contributed to the largely kinship-based character of the Society and highlighted its sectarianism. In theory the two rules were coequal in stature, but in practice a "mixed marriage" was the more serious infraction.
The Society opposed mixed marriages on both practical and spiritual grounds. On practical grounds, it was argued, those who held "contrary opinions and habits" in religion would not be able to achieve lasting domestic harmony, nor properly to rear their children. In the words of a minute from the Yearly Meeting of 1783, "Disorder in families is thereby occasioned, generally rendering a married state . . . a state of confusion and perplexity, and laying waste that united religious care . . . for the education of their off-spring in the principles of true religion."[36]
Those who followed the impulses of mutual affection without regard to religious differences deluded themselves in thinking that a purely secular attachment could bring them lasting happiness;
such an attachment the Society regarded as a form of idolatry. God blessed a marriage only when both partners made the worship of Him, according to the "Truth," their joint object.[37] Thus marriage existed for the glory of God and as such served as the foundation of church organization. Indeed, the Friends sought "the strongest sanctions our discipline could supply" to make religion a family affair;[38] they expelled violators routinely, as in every instance where members transgressed the norms of the Society.
The Society enforced its rigid insistence on group endogamy by strict control over Friends' private lives. Quaker courtship practice, for instance, required that the parents of young couples formally approve the match, and that the monthly meeting investigate whether both parties were free from other engagements. If the prospective groom belonged to another monthly meeting, the Nailsworth Society required a certificate of commendation from it, testifying to the uprightness of his character. Betty Williams and Willam Worms, in a typical example, followed the accepted procedure by announcing their intent to marry before the monthly meeting. Each obtained parental permission, and the meeting appointed Sarah Bowley, an elder among the women, "to enquire into [Betty's] conversation and clearness from all others with respect to marriage and report to the next meeting where the young couple are desired to come."[39] All issued satisfactorily, and the meeting granted the couple permission to marry.
These investigations were far from routine matters. John Bevington of Netherton, Worcestershire, and Hester Staples of Nails-worth had announced their intention to marry in the usual fashion. However, a letter was received from the Evesham Monthly Meeting "informing this meeting, that upon inquiry into John Bevington's conduct, it appeared to be such, that they could not grant him any certificate, for which reason a stop is put to his further proceeding toward marriage."[40]
The minutes provide no further details concerning Bevington's alleged "conduct." The couple, however, considered this action to be arbitrary and refused to submit: a year later the minutes reported that Hester and John were "married by a priest." A committee investigated the matter "in a spirit of Christian love and tenderness, agreeably to our known discipline," but reported that Hester "seemed not at all dissatisfied with her late proceedings,
neither desirous of continuing membership of our Society."[41] In such a manner did the strictness of Quaker rules regarding marriage lead to the needless loss of members. Hester Staples's refusal to submit, moreover, is evidence of the independence of character of many of the Friends at Nailsworth, especially the women.
Although most expulsions for mixed marriage also referred to "marriage by a priest," the evidence indicates that the former was the more serious offense. In March 1807 the women's meeting notified the men that it had discharged its duty in visiting Lucy Clark: "she being likely to be connected in marriage with a person not in profession with us."[42] Although the marriage had not yet occurred, Lucy Clark persisted in her wish to carry it forward and perhaps negotiated for permission to marry at the Friends' meetinghouse, since no mention is made of her intention to marry in Church. Her prospective groom may have been a Dissenter from another denomination.[43] A committee, composed this time of male Friends, visited her four months later and expelled her for continued intransigence.[44]
Two similar cases affirm that marriage to nonmembers was the primary reason for such expulsions. In August 1810 the minutes reported that Ann Hatcher (née Gibbs) "joined in marriage by a priest to one not of our society." During the first visitation, she acknowledged the "inconsistency" of her act but pleaded as her excuse that "she was induced to form the acquaintance with her husband, in order to marry from being told, that there was little or no doubt but he would shortly be admitted into membership, which was about six months [!] previous to his case being determined upon by the monthly meeting."[45] A committee paid her a visit a second time, during which she reaffirmed her earlier statement and added that "she discovered a considerable attachment to the Society." The meeting found her answers satisfactory, and in this singular instance took no further action.[46] Clearly, her husband's prospective membership had saved her from expulsion.
Mary Pinnock (late Gardner) was not as fortunate. In June 1811, the minutes reported that she had been married by a priest to a nonmember "without Friends knowing of such a connexion being formed." When a committee visited her in July, it discovered that she had moved to Southwark, London, and the monthly meeting requested the Friends there to make an inquiry. Her secretive-
ness and subsequent flight were motivated by a fear of expulsion. She may have learned from Lucy Clark's case that if the spouse had no immediate prospect of membership, openness in such matters counted little. When finally visited in London, "she expressed sorrow," abjectly, "for having taken such a step, with a strong desire that friends . . . not disunite her." She attended meetings regularly, while in London, and declared "her intention of continuing that practice whatever decision may be come to in her case."[47] The Nailsworth meeting thus felt "called upon to testify against such disorderly conduct" and expelled her.[48]
Control over courtship was therefore central to the proper ordering of marriage; such ordering was especially important, since Quakers treated the family as the foundation of church government. In addition, Quakers felt obliged to mediate disagreements within marriages; in this respect their meddling testified to the unprecedented degree of control they sought over members' lives. The case of Samuel and Sarah Clark suggests that the Society sought to reconcile differences that could arise from sexual difficulties. "Misunderstandings" had existed between Samuel and Sarah for some time, but the "endeavours of the Friends where the parties reside have hitherto been unavailing to reconcile the difference."[49] The monthly meeting appointed two Friends to pay them a visit, and four months later the couple could report that "the resentment and shyness between us is removed."[50]
In 1796 the minutes reported a more serious case involving William and Rebecca Wilkins of Nailsworth. The case first appeared in February 1796 and was not finally disposed of until June 1797, following visits from several deputations. The minutes first reported that "the two live in a state of separation from each other," whereupon the monthly meeting dispatched two deputations, one from the men and another from the women, to visit each party. William stated that he "objected to the term separation [;] his wife's absence was on her part voluntary and permissive on his."[51] Rebecca departed, so she claimed, because her husband "retain[ed] a woman in the house that was disagreeable to her." William refused to comment on this allegation, however, "seeing it would tend to criminate another [sic ]." The suggestion that William had brought his mistress into his home was a considerable scandal, "a shade on our Society," and his refusal to yield forced
the Society to disown him "to clear the reputation of truth and Friends."[52]
This case is interesting for two reasons. It demonstrates that Quaker women believed themselves to have had conjugal rights and that the Society concurred. Quaker patriarchalism was therefore not a rigid norm. William did not admit to any impropriety in his actions; the minutes only hint at the possibility. He had acted instead on the assumption of male domination of the household, and this was perhaps an equally serious offense. In denying him absolute authority, by the substance of their intervention, the Friends embraced the "closed domesticated" notion of copartnership between husband and wife.[53] Moreover, by the fact of their intervention, they denied the absolute autonomy of the family. Since the Quakers viewed church government as resting on the kinship network, the Society had, in principle, the right to interfere.
The importance of kinship becomes especially apparent when one examines how the Society treated membership applications. Many of those who had no apparent familial connection with the Society were scrutinized more carefully. Normally, a candidate for full membership attended Friends' religious services as an expression of interest in the Society. Attendance during the candidacy period also enabled Friends to observe the candidate's behavior and opinions. Indeed, the length of one's candidacy could be considerable.
In March 1792 Eli Evans of Nailsworth formally applied for membership. The meeting deferred his request for two months, although to Friends he seemed especially eager. After four visits, ending in October 1793, the meeting inexplicably denied his request.[54] He reapplied in January 1804, but the minutes reported that while "he is in a great measure convinced of our religious principles, his behavior is not entirely consistent therewith." The meeting once again deferred action for two months but finally decided that "upon further enquiry he does not support our testimony against tithes."[55] This type of scrutiny was typical; however, in this case the amount of time that elapsed before anyone could raise a serious objection seems problematic. Considering his two applications for membership and the twelve years he undoubtedly attended Friends' religious meetings, the belated discovery of his
"opinion" on tithes comes as a considerable surprise. The protracted nature of his candidacy and the tone of the minutes themselves suggest a deep reluctance by the Friends to entertain the membership of an outsider.[56]
The minutes communicate a different attitude when the candidacies of members' children or the offspring of "mixed marriages" were considered. Although the Society adhered to the normal practice of inquiring into a candidate's opinions, the monthly meeting remained biased in favor of those who could demonstate a familial connection. When Samuel Clark applied for membership in 1798, a deputation was appointed "to enquire of him the grounds on which he attends our religious meetings and if it appears proper to them to enquire also if he is desireous of availing himself of the privilege of his situation as the off-spring of a mixed marriage."[57] He answered that he attended "from motives of duty" and, according to the report, "does seem desireous" to avail himself of his privileged position.
Why such a privilege should have existed in the case of the progeny of mixed marriages the meeting never made explicit; it was something admitted to only informally and had to be handled with tact. The practice of "birthright" Quakerism contradicted the formal principle underlaying the issue of membership. Modeling themselves after the children of Israel,[58] the Friends viewed themselves as a distinct people, a kind of "folk," which suggested a biological affinity accompanying the receipt of grace. The children of mixed marriages, or of otherwise fallen members, could enjoy the privilege of a more lenient treatment of their membership applications because of the presumption of a partially inherited grace. This assumption did not conform to the theory of grace formally embraced by the Friends, however, which emphasized the primacy of individual experience and conformity to a strict code of conduct.
Indeed, a degree of hypocrisy seems to have attended the practice of birthright Quakerism. Was it necessary to inquire of Samuel Clark the grounds on which he attended Friends' religious meetings if, at the same time, he could invoke a special privilege? Clearly there was an inconsistency. Clarke's answer, that it was "from duty" that he attended such meetings, was, in principle, unsatisfactory. His application was therefore reconsidered three months
later, at which time it was "agreed to be left for the present and the Friends of Nailsworth preparative meeting are desired in the meantime to have him under their notice."[59] Still, Clarke was soon admitted to membership, and without the rigorous scrutiny of opinions that accompanied the membership applications of such outsiders as Elie Evans.
Social custom also influenced such attitudes. Many of those expelled for mixed marriages remained within the Society's periphery; the practice of open participation enabled them to attend meetings for worship but not meetings for discipline. The expulsion of Mary Pinnock, already cited, clearly illustrates this fact.[60] Curiously, the custom of establishing a periphery mitigated the severity of Quaker discipline. Although actual fellowship was something more desirable, loss of that status did not remove one entirely from the community. Nor was readmittance to membership automatically foreclosed.[61] Attendance at Quaker schools and religious meetings by children of a disunited member, and eventually their own formal applications for membership, strengthened the entire family's attachment to the Society.
Benjamin G. Gilkes, the son of Richard Gilkes, who had been a leading Quaker minister, offered his resignation because of what appeared to be an unavoidable marriage to an outsider.[62] Dutifully, he cited the need "in every case of unequivocal delinquency from whatever cause it may have arisen that the line of discipline should be promptly and impartially drawn."[63] Yet he also expressed the not unrealistic hope "that such a disunion will neither alienate the minds of Friends from my dear children, nor in any degree interrupt that harmony and social intercourse, which has ever been to myself a source of much real pleasure."[64] He had little to fear on either ground. The Society' had expelled Elizabeth Scusa because of a mixed marriage but after several years readmitted her to membership, together with her daughter, Caroline, who had "been brought up in the practice of attending meetings of Friends." Elizabeth confessed to "the disadvantages attendant on mixed marriages"; the proof of her repentance consisted in the way she reared her daughter and in the fact that, "for a considerable time past," she had "been frequent in the attendance of our religious meetings."[65]
Thus, it was possible to circumvent the "disadvantages" of
mixed marriages by remaining personally active at the fringes of the Society and by introducing one's children to its religious life. By doing so, the disunited member maintained an aura of fellowship and contributed to the Quakers' sense of themselves as a people, unified by the bonds of kinship. The special significance this bond held for the Quakers accented their hypersectarianism.
Other forms of discipline equally expressed the extremism of Quaker sectarianism. Expulsions for bankruptcy, in their severity, caricatured the "moral economy" of a capitalist order yet were of such a conservative cast that they simulated a spirit of autarchy. Quaker sectarianism also became manifest in intolerance of doctrinal differences that in one case resulted in expulsion and in four others led to resignations, even when no actual violation of the rules occurred.
Discipline II: "Moral Economy" and Religious Orthodoxy
In several bankruptcy cases the minutes of the Monthly Meeting reveal the importance the Society attached to "sober" business dealings and, once again, the extent to which it felt obliged to regulate the personal affairs of Friends. In three cases the Society expelled the members under investigation and in two others absolved them. In each instance the Society's judgment was based on the following considerations: the extent of the individual's responsibility, whether the member in question had approached Friends for advice before his situation deteriorated, and the steps actually undertaken by him to satisfy his creditors.
These cases hold a special interest partly because they illustrate the psychological disposition of members when confronted by the discipline of their community. Some resisted the encroachments of the Society in various ways and were expelled as much for displays of independence as for technical violations of the rules. Those whom the Society absolved were judged innocent of all responsibility for their condition, or else had acted correctly by reporting their plight directly to a Friend. Expressions of contrition, conveying an aura of self-abnegation, often accompanied a willingness to accept discipline in such matters.
These cases also reveal a hyperconservative attitude toward
business activity. The degree of control exercised by the Society, together with its morality toward indebtedness, strictly upheld the sanctity of contract, but in a manner that discouraged risk-taking.[66] For the Nailsworth Quakers, the "Protestant ethic" reinforced a limited and traditionalist approach to trade.[67]
The case of James Motley illustrates these patterns especially well. In September 1804, the monthly meeting "made an assignment of the whole of his property both in present possession and reversion to trustees for the equal benefit of all his creditors," who were to receive 20s. [!] in the Pound. This was a good beginning, but the monthly meeting also wanted "to be informed whether or not he appeared sensible of the impropriety of his former conduct which brought his affairs into embarrassment."[68] In October he refused to concede guilt but by March 1805 finally expressed "sorrow" for the "impropriety." Evidently, a creeping demoralization had overcome him, reaching its nadir in July 1805 when "he [was] imprisoned in the County gaol for debt and removed to Fleet prison."[69] Motley had failed to consult Friends about his business dealings and resisted their judgment of "impropriety" for a considerable period. His attempt to satisfy his creditors and a belated acknowledgment of error, no matter how contrite, could not, however, save him from expulsion, nor from debtors' prison.
In April 1809 William Hinton found himself in a similar position. "His mode of transacting business for some time has been very disreputable," and although he agreed to disclose his financial affairs fully to Friends, he failed to make good this promise. His "harassed state of mind" made him appear "to be going on in the same state of embarrassment and failure of punctuality in his engagements, as he had done for a considerable time past." Hinton's personal deportment apparently had deteriorated along with his business affairs; and sobriety in personal habits, for the Friends, symbolized coherence and "morality" in business.
This morality failed, however, to sanction unfettered capitalistic activity. Although the Society required Friends to conduct their affairs in a manner respectful of the property rights of others, an attitude consistent with "possessive individualism,"[70] the monthly meeting applied a peculiarly conservative interpretation of this doctrine, which discouraged risk-taking and evoked a spirit of customary restrictiveness. Thus, Hinton's "great impropriety" lay in
the "drawing of accommodation drafts," or short-term loans for covering current expenses, which the greater world treated as a routine business practice. Still, the Society expelled him as much for displays of personal independence as for the use of entrepreneurial methods since he also resisted Friends' importunities: "he is more inclined to resent the interference of Friends," the meeting concluded, "than to benefit by their advice."[71]
The case of Joseph Davies, expelled in 1829 for "embarrassed circumstances," further highlights Quaker conservatism in this same sphere.[72] An inquiry had revealed "that after his circumstances became embarrassed, he continued to borrow money when he knew himself to be insolvent and which now appears to have been the case for some years past." Friends did not accuse Davies of concealing this insolvency from his creditors, but only of acting imprudently. Evidently, he had hoped to save a deteriorating situation through continued borrowing; nor could he have been so insolvent as to carry on this practice "for years." His strategy may well have been the most rational choice under the circumstances and a genuine act of entrepreneurship. For the Quakers, however, granting of a promissory note violated the rules of equity even where the remotest chance of failure to honor its terms existed. Although such an attitude accorded with the contemporary legal emphasis on unconditional promise-keeping, the moral assumptions underlaying it constrained legitimate risk-taking.[73]
For Sarah and George Bond, Quaker discipline had a more salutary effect. In their case Friends gave well-received practical advice, which revealed both a prudential approach to trade and an intimate involvement in the private affairs of members. The report to the monthly meeting stated that "trade was so limited as to be inadequate to their expenses of living . . . and to this may be added, they met with some losses."[74] The Bonds had contemplated indebtedness to salvage their business, but before proceeding further "they advised with a Friend . . . and determined to wind up their affairs speedily." The Friend judged, seemingly on rational grounds, that theirs was too marginal an enterprise. His advice may have been colored as much by moral considerations, however, since the Bonds hesitated to draw this conclusion independently. The monthly meeting "read [the report on their affairs] with satisfaction" because the couple had avoided compounding
their "embarrassment." More importantly, however, they had consulted Friends before acting. Quaker discipline, while demanding that the Bonds be "sensible of the situation in which they involved themselves," clearly encouraged timidity and dependence rather than self-reliance.
Indeed, a Friend could go as far as formal bankruptcy if he made a "reasonable" effort, monitored by the Society, to satisfy his creditors. Thus in July 1822 the Society found James Miller in "embarrassed" circumstances because of "overtrading and having made bad debts."[75] At first he agreed "to pay [his creditors] 5s. in the Pound on condition of their granting him four years credit, during which time he would pay the remainder with interest." Although the arrangement was sufficiently normal by contemporary standards,[76] Friends found it unsatisfactory, since their rules denied Miller the right to any consideration. Instead, they forced him to liquidate the whole of his estate for the benefit of his creditors and to pay them 10s. in the Pound. Yet even this effort proved initially unsatisfactory: "from the confused state of his accounts," a committee of inquiry reported, "we have not been able to judge ourselves in this respect." Six months later Miller paid his debt at the 50 percent rate, declaring obsequiously that he did not "consider his obligations discharged . . . until he had paid the whole." He wanted "to pay every man his due,"[77] and for this demonstration of "good character" the meeting dismissed his case.[78]
Thus, in several bankruptcy cases the minutes of the monthly meeting reveal that the real violation occurred where the member either failed to consult the Society regarding the state of his business affairs or had steadfastly refused to follow its advice once his situation had become known. This preoccupation with control, contrary to the Weber thesis, discouraged entrepreneurship; Friends, in adopting an unusally cautious concern for the morality of business practice, regarded the pursuit of enterprise as potentially harmful to group solidarity. "It doth not appear," commented the answer to the third query sent to the Yearly Meeting in 1775, "that any [Friends] overcharge themselves with business to the hindrance of their service."[79]
Still, despite these constraints, the Society offered a system of emotional support that relieved members of the anxiety and uncertainty they confronted as actors in the marketplace. The sense of
gratified relief the Bonds clearly derived by conforming to Quaker discipline stands in sharp contrast to James Motley's "sorrow" and William Hinton's "harassed state of mind," both consequences of uninhibited freedom.
Quaker sectarianism was revealed further in the Society's strict enforcement of doctrinal orthodoxy among Friends. In four cases members resigned voluntarily, recognizing that the Society could not sanction plural affiliation, and in only one case did expulsion occur. Those who resigned wished to attend Church of England services and did so without feelings of hostility toward the Society. David Bowley, Jr. resigned "on account of his preferring the established national worship"; after visiting him, Friends recounted a friendly reception but could not report a change in his attitude.[80] Mary Roberts had resigned "from a conscientious scruple on the subject of the sacrament," and not from any objection to the Society's "pure mode of worship, general opinions and excellent discipline."[81] Another David Bowley, objecting with equanimity to the Quaker conception of grace, resigned in 1840 and drew a firm but friendly defense of the Society's system of worship from the monthly meeting.[82] These departing Friends accepted reluctantly the need to relinquish membership; for them disagreements of principle, when grounded in reason, allowed for a mutually agreeable, although by no means inevitable, separation.
Amiability was absent, however, in the one expulsion for doctrinal reasons recorded by the monthly meeting. In 1807 the Society expelled Daniel Roberts for propagating "certain visionary and absurd notions of one Joanna Southcott, which are repugnant of the religious principles of Friends," namely, her ostensible assertion that "she herself [is] an instrument divinely appointed for and necessary to the redemption of mankind."[83] The Society did not adandon Roberts lightly, however; it expelled him only "after much entreaty to reform" lasting well over a year.[84] Still, his wife and children felt obliged to resign in protest against this treatment of him: "while we remain members amongst you, we conceive ourselves to be in some degree implicated in your unjust, unfeeling and cruel treatment of him."[85]
Six years later, however, his son, Oade Roberts, reapplied for membership. The minutes report that "his seceding from the Society arose from his youth and inexperience and in submission to his
parents. Yet he took the blame himself for a decision that has caused him much regret."[86] In 1818 Ann Roberts, together with her children, John and Mary,[87] followed suit. They wanted to rejoin, in contrast to their earlier sentiments, "a Society with which we are connected by so many important and interesting motives." In an oblique reference to Daniel Roberts, they reported themselves "gratified . . . that every obstacle which might have opposed [their readmission] has long since [been] extinguished."[88] Clearly, the dual loyalty felt by the Roberts family at the time of his expulsion ceased after the lapse of a decade. Once again Quaker discipline subverted patriarchal authority; if the Friends treated the family as the foundation of church government, they also believed that each member owed primary loyalty to the Society. For Roberts's wife and three children, attachment to the community proved irresistible because of the emotional and spiritual succor it offered.