London: Friends House, Library of the Society of Friends, MS Vols 376-77


Owned by Robert Spence from 1861, and bound in its present form in 1878. The boards are c. 10" x 14".

MS Vols 376-377 contain the Journal of George Fox, largely in a manuscript dictated by Fox to his stepson-in-law Thomas Lower c.1675-8. The opening section of the narrative is missing, but was clearly used by Ellwood for his 1694 printed edition, and modern editors (Nickalls, Smith) supply the text from this.



There are no less than three separate systems of foliation and pagination:

  • foliation on LHS top of guard. In pencil. Starts for some reason at 171. Fairly continuous but misses out some inserts. Occasionally also written on text.
  • foliation on RHS top of guard. In pencil. Starts at 10 with text. Runs through consistently, even where the folia have become misplaced (i.e. does not recognise the misplacements). Followed in this edition.
  • pagination on text at LHS top corner. In ink. Precedes the current arrangement, because some of the numbers are out of order. Inconsistent, and repeats itself in the 70s and 80s. Seems to be text-related – misses out some inserts, but not all; tends to disregard blank pages and endorsements. Interesting clue to the earlier stage of arrangement.



Lower takes over from another amanuensis halfway down fol. 11v (page 20). He appears to have corrected the work of this earlier writer as well as his own.


His writing is workmanlike and fluent, though undistinguished. An autograph letter (Friends House MS 378, page 174) of 4 January 1674/5 provides samples of both his formal and more hasty writing:



He is clearly writing to dictation from an author who is both used to communicating orally and concerned with the effect of his words. There are two layers of correction clearly visible: one made during dictation, and one on a later read-back.


        ye Lorde Came to mee eate not lest thyn breade
        with such as has an euill eye : & yI gott vppe from


        in ye morninge: & Jo: Blayklinge & others: came to

                                                                    reproue ym:

        mee & & Desired mee not to speake publickely to ym
        for they was not parish teachers but pretty sober men

We have marked up these erasures and corrections in two different colours:
      •   dark blue for the first level of correction, and
      •   bright purple for the later level.

The manuscript is however much more than a simple journal. Interspersed with the narrative are groups of copies of letters sent by and to Fox, and other relevant papers, of all shapes and sizes, which are grouped at appropriate points. They are in a variety of hands, suggesting that Fox and Margaret Fell had a large army of amanuenses. (A database of these hands should facilitate a proper study of Fox's evangelical publication methods.) Most of them have been endorsed by Fox himself, usually with the date and other identifying comments (see e.g. folio 36v, Letter to Justice Sawrey):


G ff to frends
  1
 X


Fox's autograph



        

g. f. to john saro
the greatest percuter in
in the north of ingland this
was sent to him 1652
whoe after was drovnded
          this is to be retin

__________________
(12) done

Later editorial marks are indicated in orange.

London: Library of the Society of Friends, MS Vol 376 (Spence MS) fol. 36v
© Image copyright of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain



Among these papers is an apparently verbatim report, possibly from a shorthand transcript, of the trial of Fox at Lancaster sessions in 1652 (fols 47r-49v). There are however corrections apparently made by a later hand, possibly Lower.


    Judge ffell   What say yw to yt that he was as vpright as Christ /
    Smithe   That hee said that he was as vpright as Christe /
    Judg ffell   yow are a single Witnesse to that, & that ^hee saide God taught deceipt, yow are

                                  witnesse       alsoe     to   of yr accusations   but

    but a but a single ^ to that ^. So three ^ heres ^ a single witnesse onely
    Geo: ffox   that was not soe spoken that I was equall wth God, hee that
            sanctifyeth and hee that is sanctifyed are ^ all of one, they are one ...

London: Library of the Society of Friends, MS Vol 376 (Spence MS) fol. 47v
© Image copyright of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain


In this section of the manuscript, the balance between narrative and additional documentary evidence is roughly 50:50 (61 pages of of narrative to 59 pages of documents. This does not include blank sides).

Besides these interpolated documents, there are a few narrative interpolations on smaller sheets of paper (fols 37r, 39r, 88r, 93v in this section) which appear to be supplementary material. Some of these are bound in out of sequence.

There are also two 19th-century check lists of material (fols 62 and 91).

All these different sizes of paper are mounted in uniformly-sized guards. It is thus not possible to tell how the original manuscript was bound, if at all, or for how long it existed as a sheaf of papers ( see description of 1694 edition). In this section, folios 93 and 94 have been bound in reversed.

The manuscript is occasionally marked up in the margins in a 17th-century hand. It seems likely that this was for the Ellwood 1694 edition - Ellwood made a fair copy for printing. Possibly at this time the opening section went missing. The first page of narrative is marked as page 17. It begins in the middle of a sentence towards the end of the account of 1649.

It is also marked up on the mounts, partly for subject matter. These have been omitted in our transcription.