“I AM ARRAIGNED A PRISONER” (WILLIAM PENN): FIRST EDITION OF COLLECTION OF THE SUFFERINGS OF… QUAKERS, 1753,TWO SCARCE FOLIO VOLUMES OF BESSE’S IMPORTANT QUAKER HISTORY

(QUAKERS) BESSE, Joseph. Collection of the Sufferings of the People Called Quakers. London: Luke Hinde, 1753. Two volumes. Folio (9 by 13 inches), modern full brown calf, renewed endpapers; pp. [i-ii], iii-lv [lvi], 1-767 [1]; [i-ii], 1-537, [538], 539-638, [i-x].

First edition of Quaker historian Besse’s foundational Collection (1753), a massive two-volume folio work on the immense hostility directed at 17th-century Quakers in England, Europe and America, with vivid eyewitness accounts, key parliamentary acts and dramatic court testimony from the trials of William Penn and American Quakers such as Mary Dyer, including writings by George Fox.

This scarce two-volume folio first edition of A Collection of the Sufferings, by major early Quaker historian Besse, assembles printings of key parliamentary acts, witness accounts, powerful testimonies and trial transcripts from numerous Quakers and leaders such as William Penn and George Fox— documenting the often brutal hostility directed at Quakers in the 17th century. It was a time when the “animosity was a mixture of xenophobia, class hatred, ignorance and a superstition that merged with the world of witchcraft” (Reay, Popular Hostility, 407). “From an early stage Quakers collected, and published, accounts of their sufferings…. [for] lobbying the king, ministers, MPs, judges, bishops— anyone who might legitimately ease the burdens under which the Quakers labored.” As this Collection clearly reveals, it was not unusual for Quakers to face public beatings, and meeting houses were frequently “attacked; windows were smashed; stones, mud, water and sewage were thrown” (Miller, Past and Present, 73-8). In Cambridge, when William Allen was preaching, students ran “through the Meeting-house like wild Horses… they threw Stones at him, broke his Head in several Places, cut his Face, and bruised his Body… In like manner did they abuse others of the Assembly, pulling off the Womens [sic] Headclothes, and daubing their Faces with Filth and Excrement” (I:86-7). In a transcript of a 1670 trial of William Penn, he struggles for “a fair Hearing, and Liberty of making my Defence” (I:417). He protests: “I am arraigned a Prisoner… Must I be taken away, because I plead for the fundamental Laws of England” (emphasis in original, I:419). As Besse pointedly notes, this Collection “contains a Multitude of Instances of the Trials, Afflictions and Sufferings, cruel Mockings and Scourgings, Bonds, Imprisonments and Deaths, which this religious People underwent… during a violent Storm of Persecution of near forty Years” (II:534). This impressive work substantially demonstrates how “the relationship between Quakers and the written word forms a crucial dynamic… eliding accounts of sufferings with accounts of intense spiritual experience and crushing political denunciation of the English government” (Peters, Patterns of Quaker Authorship). Includes early Quaker history across England, Europe and America: featuring the trial and execution in Rhode Island of Mary Dyer. Volume II with rear appendices listing the “Names of the Sufferers,” “Table of the Principal Contents,” rear errata. Volume I with mispagination as issued without loss of text. Lowndes, 165. Tipped-in clipping (4-3/4 by 4 inches) (I:563). Tiny corrections to mispagination (142-3).

Interiors fresh with light scattered foxing, title pages with mild edge-wear, minor restoration to gutter margins, archival restoration to first text leaf (II), tiny bit of marginal wormholing (I). A most desirable extremely good set.