History of The Religious Society of Friends in Lurgan

CHAPTER EIGHT

DECLINE AND REVIVAL

From the middle of the eighteenth century reports on the state of the meeting indicate that Lurgan Friends were concerned about their poor spiritual health and vigour and this view was confirmed, as we have seen, from the observations of visiting ministers. Although Friends tended to live somewhat separated and secluded lives, they were, nevertheless, subject to the prevailing influences and thought patterns of their age.

SOCIAL PRESSURES

Families which had prospered in the linen trade and other forms of commerce moved in circles which had a lifestyle very different from that which was recommended by Friends. Many found it impossible to maintain this dual existence and their commitment to Friends' principles became rather nominal. Adherence to the quaint form of address and plain clothes, persistence in refusing legal oaths and avoiding the payment of tithes and other Quakerly peculiarities were of little value in furthering their commercial interests and thus were gradually abandoned .

THE ENLIGHTENMENT

The general spirit of the age which is often designated as the Enlightenment produced many factors which affected traditional Christian faith. The French Revolution, too, which was greeted enthusiastically by many of the merchant class in Ulster, popularised the deist philosophy of its originators. In the Presbyterian Church many adherents refused to subscribe to the Westminster Confession and adopted a more rationalistic approach to religion. By the late eighteenth century some Friends were voicing difficulties over the authority of the Bible, particularly with reference to parts of the Old Testament, and were exalting the role of direct revelation. These Friends, who were popularly called 'New Lights ', were also critical of traditional forms of Quaker testimonies which did not radically address the demands of contemporary life .

IRREGULAR MARRIAGE CEREMONY

Confrontation between the 'New Lights' and orthodox Friends, which had simmered for some time and was associated with support for or opposition to visiting American ministers, came to a head over an irregular wedding ceremony in 1801. Elizabeth Doyle, a teacher at Friends' School, Lisburn, which was since 1796 under the direct control of Ulster Quarterly Meeting, wished to marry a local Friend, John Rogers, and applied to marry 'without going through a round of formal ceremonies'. This permission was refused, so the couple took each other in marriage at a special meeting held in the School and attended by a number of prominent Friends. The newly weds were promptly disowned and also all those Friends who had sanctioned the union by their attendance at the ceremony. They included five members of Lurgan Monthly Meeting.

LURGAN DISOWNMENTS

The following year a Lurgan Friend, Mary Ann Woods, was married to William James Hogg of Lisburn in a meeting called at the home of James Christy of Moyallon. Again the bride and groom were disowned, as were all those Friends who had attended the irregular ceremony. Many further resignations and disownments occurred and soon the Select Meeting (or Meeting of Elders and Ministers) of Ulster Quarterly Meeting was laid down. No Elders remained in office and there was only one Friend, John Conran, with the status of Minister. In the space of two years some twenty-six members of Lurgan Monthly Meeting were lost through disownment or resignation, including many who had been very active in the spiritual and practical life of the Society. Family names of these members were Adams, Boardman, Christy, Clibborn, Courtenay, Davis, Dawson, Gilmour, Greeves, Matthews, Morton, Phelps, Pike, Sinton, Uprichard, Williams and Woods.

THE SEPARATION

These convulsions which occurred throughout all the Quarterly Meetings greatly affected the strength and witness of Friends in the whole country. Many former members had been very active in the business side of the Society and the organisational cohesion was much weakened by their loss. The ' Separation' had less effect upon the quiet, humble members whose involvement consisted principally of worship on Sunday and Wednesday mornings at their local meetings and who had not the means or leisure to travel to distant Monthly, Quarterly or Yearly Meetings. Lurgan contained many such, for whom life was an earnest struggle and whose days were fully occupied with the demands of the home, the farm and weaving shop. They continued in most part to support the meeting to which they had strong family and emotional ties.

TRAVELLING MINISTERS

The state of Quakerism in Ireland greatly exercised Friends in both Britain and America and travelling ministers came frequently to bring encouragement and spiritual nurture.

WILLIAM FORSTER, an English Friend who subsequently played a very active part in Irish Famine Relief work, spent the entire summer of 1813 visiting members of Grange, Richhill and Lurgan in their homes and recorded his impressions thus:

'Many of the Friends are in low circumstances; some of them living in poor cabins, and apparently strangers to much of what we consider the comforts of civilised life, but generally in a state of independence, holding a small portion of land, from six or eight to thirty or thirty-five acres. They grow their own flax which is spun, and in many cases woven, in the house, and sold in the market as it is made. This is the support of most of the inhabitants in this populous province. Almost every family has a little land: thirty acres is considered a large farm, and enough for a man's whole business, so that there is hardly a family without a cow, and whose land does not furnish their own peat.'

STEPHEN GRELLET, the French aristocrat who joined Friends in America, attended Quarterly Meeting in Lurgan in 1811. Of that visit he wrote:

'Owing to the troubles occasioned by the anti-christian spirit which had extensively prevailed in that Province, most of the Ministers and Elders in those parts had withdrawn from Christian fellowship with us, and the Quarterly Meeting for Ministers and Elders had been suspended twelve years. It was now held again. Friends in these stations are very few, but they appear to be a valuable remnant. It was a solemn, contriting meeting; some of us were forcibly reminded of Nehemiah, who, after his return from the long Babylonish captivity, went around Jerusalem during the night, to view the state of devastation to which it was reduced.'

JOHN CONRAN, the sole remaining minister at the time of the Separation, writes in his Journal in 1822 of his return to Lurgan Meeting. It was in this meeting in 1772 that he first was convinced of the Quaker message and had first engaged in ministry. His disappointment is evident when he thinks of the situation many years before:

'The Monthly Meeting, held in Lurgan, (was) a very small gathering, and a poor low time. When the meeting for discipline was about closing, under painful exercise I felt on account of the meeting, (about eight or nine men), I told them I remembered when there were 63 families who were esteemed in membership and about 60 families not in membership when I visited them.'

ELIZABETH FRY came to Lurgan in 1827 on a journey through Ireland visiting Friends and also advising the government on measures to be taken for penal reform. Her brother, JOSEPH JOHN GURNEY, who accompanied her, records:

'We went through a driving snow to Lurgan, the original settlement of Friends in this land. A large, old meeting house, and a small scattered flock. There was no invitation, and the weather was very severe, yet the inhabitants of the place flocked to meeting, evidently athirst, in no common degree, after living waters; and a very solemn assembly we had.'

FAMINE YEARS

The 1840s were times of great distress for the entire island of Ireland. While the South and West suffered grievously, the densely populated area around Lurgan did not go unscathed. Weavers in the Lurgan area were earning less than twenty-five pence a week for a web of sixty yards of cloth. They had to work at their handlooms in their own unheated cottages for several nights until two or three o'clock in the morning. Many collapsed at their work. The money they received was barely enough to support one individual, let alone a family. Eventually this distress caused families to seek refuge in the workhouse. Through fever and malnutrition some 2000 died in Lurgan Union Workhouse and Fever Hospital within a space of five years.

A Central Relief Committee was set up by Quakers in Dublin with corresponding members in various parts of the provinces. Thomas C. Wakefield of Moyallon was one such member and other Friends from Moy, Dungannon and Lisburn served in this capacity.

JOHN DILWORTH, an Anglican living in the townland of Bocombra, between Lurgan and Portadown, but acting as an agent for the Friends Central Committee, reported in March 1847 on the dreadful condition of the people in the area in the following terms:

'I have met with some most deplorable cases which, I think, cannot be exceeded even in the South of Ireland. One, of which I have been an eyewitness, on the estate of the Right Honourable Lord Lurgan, near the "Rose and Crown on the old road leading to Portadown. About the beginning of this month, in the course of my visitings, I called on a family named McClean - found the house like a pig-sty - having fled from the Lurgan poor-house, where fever and dysentery prevailed - they returned home only to encounter greater horrors. Want sent the poor man to bed. I gave him some assistance, but he died a few days later. The wife, almost immediately after, met the same melancholy fate; and a daughter soon followed her parents to the grave. I found all the members of the family very ill, except one boy, who, with the help of others, put the deceased into coffins.

On the Thursday after, I repeated my visit; and, just within the door of the wretched habitation, I saw a young man, about twenty years old, sitting before a live coal, about the size of an egg, entirely naked; and another lad, about thirteen leaning against a post. On turning to the right, I saw a quantity of straw, which had become litter; the rest of the family reclining on this wretched bed, also naked, with an old rug for covering. My attention was directed to an object at my feet, and over which I nearly stumbled, the place being so dark - and, oh! what a spectacle! a young man about fourteen or fifteen, on the cold damp floor - dead! - without a single vestige of clothing - the eyes sunk - the mouth wide open - the flesh shrivelled up - the bones all visible - so small around the waist, that I could span him with my hand. The corpse had been in that situation for five successive days.

I was greatly shocked, and got as much money as purchased a coffin, had the remains interred, procured several articles of nourishment for the survivors, and next day brought various garments suited to their necessities.'

Grants of clothing to Co. Armagh by the Friends Relief Committee in 1847 exceeded those to all other counties in Ulster and money, food and clothes were distributed among the destitute in this area. Other local initiatives undertaken by the Committee were the supply of nets and tackle for fishing in Lough Neagh and the distribution of turnip, carrot, parsnip and cabbage seed to improve the nutritional diet.

According to public records members of Lurgan Meeting did not suffer as severely as many others in the vicinity. Being a small community they cared for each other and shared their meagre resources in this time of general deprivation. Friends' burial records for the late 1840s do not show any dramatic rise. However, in 1848 Lurgan Workhouse records the admission of a weaver, named Henry Roagers, whose religious affiliation was given as ' Quaker ' .

1859 REVIVAL

In the middle years of the century Friends' interest in the Temperance movement grew, as did efforts to distribute and promote the reading of the Bible. These endeavours brought Friends into closer contact with other denominations and removed them to a certain degree from their religious isolation. The Religious Revival which swept through Ulster in 1859 influenced life to a deep level. A report from Ireland in the Friends Review, published in Philadelphia in 1860 tells of how Orange Lodges voluntarily abandoned their twelfth of July parades and how Orangemen and Roman Catholics were seen peacefully conversing and exchanging expressions of kindness. (Perhaps this has a message for our own times.)

'The Friend' reports on a visit to the North of Ireland by William Tanner of Bristol and his mother, Mary, in October 1859. They visited most of the meetings in Ulster, but also held public meetings in Presbyterian and Baptist Churches in Coleraine, Ballymena and near Dungannon. 'A Meeting in the Friends' meeting-house at Lurgan was very crowded - about 500 within the house and a large number outside - while hundreds, it was thought, went away unable to gain admission. The solemnity prevalent was remarkable.' The following day they went to Portadown 'where they held a meeting in the Town Hall, which was much crowded, hundreds again going away for want of room.' The report concludes with the general comment: 'Much openness was manifested in the minds of the people towards our Friends, and many expressed their satisfaction that such meetings had been held. The demand for Friends' tracts in some districts of the north of Ireland, during the last four months, has been beyond all precedent, and upwards of 40,000 have been lately put into circulation.'