Read Ebook: Hugh Wynne Free Quaker Sometime Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel on the Staff of his Excellency General Washington by Mitchell S Weir Silas Weir

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In or about the year 1671, and of course before Mr. Penn, the proprietary, came over, my grandfather had crossed the sea, and settled near Chester on lands belonging to the Swedes. The reason of his coming was this: about 1669 the Welsh of the English church and the magistrates were greatly stirred to wrath against the people called Quakers, because of their refusal to pay tithes. Among these offenders was no small number of the lesser gentry, especially they of Merionethshire.

My grandfather, Hugh Wynne, was the son and successor of Godfrey Wynne, of Wyncote. How he chanced to be born among these hot-blooded Wynnes I do not comprehend. He is said to have been gay in his early days, but in young manhood to have become averse to the wild ways of his breed, and to have taken a serious and contemplative turn. Falling in with preachers of the people called Quakers, he left the church of the establishment, gave up hunting, ate his game-cocks, and took to straight collars, plain clothes, and plain talk. When he refused to pay the tithes he was fined, and at last cast into prison in Shrewsbury Gate House, where he lay for a year, with no more mind to be taxed for a hireling ministry at the end of that time than at the beginning.

His next brother, William, a churchman as men go, seems to have loved him, although he was himself a rollicking fox-hunter; and, seeing that Hugh would die if left in this duress, engaged him to go to America. Upon his agreeing to make over his estate to William, those in authority readily consented to his liberation, since William had no scruples as to the matter of tithes, and with him there would be no further trouble. Thus it came about that my grandfather Hugh left Wales. He had with him, I presume, enough of means to enable him to make a start in Pennsylvania. It could not have been much. He carried also, what no doubt he valued, a certificate of removal from the Quarterly Meeting held at Tyddyn y Garreg. I have this singular document. In it is said of him and of his wife, Ellin , that "they are faithfull and beloved Friends, well known to be serviceable unto Friends and brethren, since they have become convinced; of a blameless and savory conversation. Also are P'sons Dearly beloved of all Souls. His testimony sweet and tender, reaching to the quicking seed of life; we cannot alsoe but bemoan the want of his company, for that in difficult occasion he was sted-fast--nor was one to be turned aside. He is now seasonable in intention for the Plantations, in order into finding his way clear, and freedom in the truth according to the measure manifested unto him," etc. And so the strong-minded man is commended to Friends across the seas. In the records of the meetings for sufferings in England are certain of his letters from the jail. How his character descended to my sterner parent, and, through another generation, to me, and how the coming in of my mother's gentler blood helped in after-days, and amid stir of war, to modify in me, this present writer, the ruder qualities of my race, I may hope to set forth.

William died suddenly in 1679 without children, and was succeeded by the third brother, Owen. This gentleman lived the life of his time, and, dying in 1700 of much beer and many strong waters, left one son, Owen, a minor. What with executors and other evils, the estate now went from ill to worse. Owen Wynne 2d was in no haste, and thus married as late as somewhere about 1740, and had issue, William, and later, in 1744, a second son, Arthur, and perhaps others; but of all this I heard naught until many years after, as I have already said.

It may seem a weak and careless thing for a man thus to cast away his father's lands as my ancestor did; but what he gave up was a poor estate, embarrassed with mortgages and lessened by fines, until the income was, I suspect, but small. Certain it is that the freedom to worship God as he pleased was more to him than wealth, and assuredly not to be set against a so meagre estate, where he must have lived among enmities, or must have diced, drunk, and hunted with the rest of his kinsmen and neighbours.

Under the mild and just rule of the proprietary, my grandfather Hugh prospered, and in turn his son John, my father, to a far greater extent. Their old home in Wales became to them, as time went on, less and less important. Their acres here in Merion and Bucks were more numerous and more fertile. I may add that the possession of many slaves in Maryland, and a few in Pennsylvania, gave them the feeling of authority and position, which the colonial was apt to lose in the presence of his English rulers, who, being in those days principally gentlemen of the army, were given to assuming airs of superiority.

In a word, my grandfather, a man of excellent wits and of much importance, was of the council of William Penn, and, as one of his chosen advisers, much engaged in his difficulties with the Lord Baltimore as to the boundaries of the lands held of the crown. Finally, when, as Penn says, "I could not prevail with my wife to stay, and still less with Tishe," which was short for Laetitia, his daughter, an obstinate wench, it was to men like Logan and my grandfather that he gave his full confidence and delegated his authority; so that Hugh Wynne had become, long before his death, a person of so much greater condition than the small squires to whom he had given up his estate, that he was like Joseph in this new land. What with the indifference come of large means, and disgust for a country where he had been ill treated, he probably ceased to think of his forefathers' life in Wales as of a thing either desirable or in any way suited to his own creed.

Soon the letters, which at first were frequent, that is, coming twice a year, when the London packet arrived or departed, became rare; and if, on the death of my great-uncle William, they ceased, or if any passed later between us and the next holder of Wyncote, I never knew. The Welsh squires had our homestead, and we our better portion of wealth and freedom in this new land. And so ended my knowledge of this matter for many a year.

You will readily understand that the rude life of a fox-hunting squire or the position of a strict Quaker on a but moderate estate in Merionethshire would have had little to tempt my father. Yet one thing remained with him awhile as an unchanged inheritance, to which, so far as I remember, he only once alluded. Indeed, I should never have guessed that he gave the matter a thought but for that visit of Mr. John Penn, and the way it recurred to me in later days in connection with an incident concerning the picture and the blazoned arms.

I think he cared less and less as years went by. In earlier days he may still have liked to remember that he might have been Wynne of Wyncote; but this is a mere guess on my part. Pride spiritual is a master passion, and certain it is that the creed and ways of Fox and Penn became to him, as years created habits, of an importance far beyond the pride which values ancient blood or a stainless shield.

The old house, which was built much in the same fashion as the great mansion of my Lord Dysart on the Thames near to Richmond, but smaller, was, after all, his family home. The picture and the arms were hid away in deference to opinions by which in general he more and more sternly abided. Once, when I was older, I went into his bedroom, and was surprised to find him standing before the hearth, his hands crossed behind his back, looking earnestly at the brightly coloured shield beneath the picture of Wyncote. I knew too well to disturb him in these silent moods, but hearing my steps, he suddenly called me to him. I obeyed with the dread his sternness always caused me. To my astonishment, his face was flushed and his eyes were moist. He laid his hand on my shoulder, and clutched it hard as he spoke. He did not turn, but, still looking up at the arms, said, in a voice which paused between the words and sounded strange:

"I have been insulted to-day, Hugh, by the man Thomas Bradford. I thank God that the Spirit prevailed with me to answer him in Christian meekness. He came near to worse things than harsh words. Be warned, my son. It is a terrible set-back from right living to come of a hot-blooded breed like these Wynnes."

I looked up at Mm as he spoke. He was smiling, "But not all bad, Hugh, not all bad. Remember that it is something, in this nest of disloyal traders, to have come of gentle blood."

Then he left gazing on the arms and the old home of our people, and said severely, "Hast thou gotten thy tasks to-day?"

"Yes."

"It has not been so of late. I hope thou hast considered before speaking. If I hear no better of thee soon thou wilt repent it. It is time thou shouldst take thy life more seriously. What I have said is for no ear but thine."

I went away with a vague feeling that I had suffered for Mr. Bradford, and on account of my father's refusal to join in resistance to the Stamp Act; for this was in November, 1765, and I was then fully twelve years of age.

My father's confession, and all he had said following it, made upon me one of those lasting impressions which are rare in youth, but which may have a great influence on the life of a man. Now all the boys were against the Stamp Act, and I had at the moment a sudden fear at being opposed to my father. I had, too, a feeling of personal shame because this strong man, whom I dreaded on account of his severity, should have been so overwhelmed by an insult. There was at this period, and later, much going on in my outer life to lessen the relentless influence of the creed of conduct which prevailed in our home for me, and for all of our house. I had even then begun to suspect at school that non-resistance did not add permanently to the comfort of life. I was sorry that my father had not resorted to stronger measures with Mr. Bradford, a gentleman whom, in after-years, I learned greatly to respect.

More than anything else, this exceptional experience as to my father left me with a great desire to know more of these Wynnes, and with a certain share of that pride of race, which, to my surprise, as I think it over now, was at that time in my father's esteem a possession of value. I am bound to add that I also felt some self-importance at being intrusted with this secret, for such indeed it was.

Before my grandfather left Wales he had married a distant cousin, Ellin Owen, and on her death, childless, he took to wife, many years later, her younger sister, Gainor for these Owens, our kinsmen, had also become Friends, and had followed my grandfather's example in leaving their home in Merionethshire. To this second marriage, which occurred in 1713, were born my aunt, Gainor Wynne, and, two years later, my father, John Wynne. I have no remembrance of either grandparent. Both lie in the ground at Merion Meeting-house, under nameless, unmarked graves, after the manner of Friends. I like it not.

My father, being a stern and silent man, must needs be caught by his very opposite, and, according to this law of our nature, fell in love with Marie Beauvais, the orphan of a French gentleman who had become a Quaker, and was of that part of France called the Midi. Of this marriage I was the only surviving offspring, my sister Ellin dying when I was an infant. I was born in the city of Penn, on January 9, 1753, at 9 P.M.

I have but to close my eyes to see the house in which I lived in my youth. It stood in the city of Penn, back from the low bluff of Dock Creek, near to Walnut street. The garden stretched down to the water, and before the door were still left on either side two great hemlock-spruces, which must have been part of the noble woods under which the first settlers found shelter. Behind the house was a separate building, long and low, in which all the cooking was done, and upstairs were the rooms where the slaves dwelt apart.

The great garden stretched westward as far as Third street, and was full of fine fruit-trees, and in the autumn of melons, first brought hither in one of my father's ships. Herbs and simples were not wanting, nor berries, for all good housewives in those days were expected to be able to treat colds and the lesser maladies with simples, as they were called, and to provide abundantly jams and conserves of divers kinds.

There were many flowers too, and my mother loved to make a home here for the wildings she found in the governor's woods. I have heard her regret that the most delicious of all the growths of spring, the ground-sweet, which I think they now call arbutus, would not prosper out of its forest shelter.

The house was of black and red brick, and double; that is, with two windows on each side of a white Doric doorway, having something portly about it. I use the word as Dr. Johnson defines it: a house of port, with a look of sufficiency, and, too, of ready hospitality, which was due, I think, to the upper half of the door being open a good part of the year. I recall also the bull's-eye of thick glass in the upper half-door, and below it a great brass knocker. In the white shutters were cut crescentic openings, which looked at night like half-shut eyes when there were lights within the rooms. In the hall were hung on pegs leathern buckets. They were painted green, and bore, in yellow letters, "Fire" and "J.W."

The day I went to school for the first time is very clear in my memory. I can see myself, a stout little fellow about eight years old, clad in gray homespun, with breeches, low shoes, and a low, flat beaver hat. I can hear my mother say, "Here are two big apples for thy master," it being the custom so to propitiate pedagogues. Often afterward I took eggs in a little basket, or flowers, and others did the like.

"Now run! run!" she cried, "and be a good boy; run, or thou wilt be late." And she clapped her hands as I sped away, now and then looking back over my shoulder.

I remember as well my return home to this solid house, this first day of my going to school. One is apt to associate events with persons, and my mother stood leaning on the half-door as I came running back. She was some little reassured to see me smiling, for, to tell the truth, I had been mightily scared at my new venture.

This sweet and most tender-hearted lady wore, as you may like to know, a gray gown, and a blue chintz apron fastened over the shoulders with wide bands. On her head was a very broad-brimmed white beaver hat, low in the crown, and tied by silk cords under her chin. She had a great quantity of brown hair, among which was one wide strand of gray. This she had from youth, I have been told. It was all very silken, and so curly that it was ever in rebellion against the custom of Friends, which would have had it flat on the temples. Indeed, I never saw it so, for, whether at the back or at the front, it was wont to escape in large curls. Nor do I think she disliked this worldly wilfulness, for which nature had provided an unanswerable excuse. She had serious blue eyes, very large and wide open, so that the clear white was seen all around the blue, and with a constant look as if of gentle surprise. In middle life she was still pliant and well rounded, with a certain compliment of fresh prettiness in whatever gesture she addressed to friend or guest. Some said it was a French way, and indeed she made more use of her hands in speech than was common among people of British race.

Her goodness seems to me to have been instinctive, and to have needed neither thought nor effort. Her faults, as I think of her, were mostly such as arise from excess of loving and of noble moods. She would be lavish where she had better have been merely generous, or rash where some would have lacked even the commoner qualities of courage. Indeed, as to this, she feared no one--neither my grave father nor the grimmest of inquisitive committees of Friends.

As I came she set those large, childlike eyes on me, and opening the lower half-door, cried out:

"I could scarce wait for thee! I wish I could have gone with thee, Hugh; and was it dreadful? Come, let us see thy little book. And did they praise thy reading? Didst thou tell them I taught thee? There are girls, I hear," and so on--a way she had of asking many questions without waiting for a reply.

As we chatted we passed through the hall, where tall mahogany chairs stood dark against the whitewashed walls, such as were in all the rooms. Joyous at escape from school, and its confinement of three long, weary hours, from eight to eleven, I dropped my mother's hand, and, running a little, slid down the long entry over the thinly sanded floor, and then slipping, came down with a rueful countenance, as nature, foreseeing results, meant that a boy should descend when his legs fail him. My mother sat down on a settle, and spread out both palms toward me, laughing, and crying out:

"So near are joy and grief, my friends, in this world of sorrow."

This was said so exactly with the voice and manner of a famous preacher of our Meeting that even I, a lad then of only eight years, recognised the imitation. Indeed, she was wonderful at this trick of mimicry, a thing most odious to Friends. As I smiled, hearing her, I was aware of my father in the open doorway of the sitting-room, tall, strong, with much iron-gray hair. Within I saw several Friends, large rosy men in drab, with horn buttons and straight collars, their stout legs clad in dark silk hose, without the paste or silver buckles then in use. All wore broad-brimmed, low beavers, and their gold-headed canes rested between their knees.

My father said to me, in his sharp way, "Take thy noise out into the orchard. The child disturbs us, wife. Thou shouldst know better. A committee of overseers is with me." He disliked the name Marie, and was never heard to use it, nor even its English equivalent.

Upon this the dear lady murmured, "Let us fly, Hugh," and she ran on tiptoe along the hall with me, while my father closed the door. "Come," she added, "and see the floor. I am proud of it. We have friends to eat dinner with us at two."

The great room where we took our meals is still clear in my mind. The floor was two inches deep in white sand, in which were carefully traced zigzag lines, with odd patterns in the corners. A bare table of well-rubbed mahogany stood in the middle, with a thin board or two laid on the sand, that the table might be set without disturbing the patterns, In the corners were glass-covered buffets, full of silver and Delft ware; and a punch-bowl of Chelsea was on the broad window-ledge, with a silver-mounted cocoanut ladle.

"The floor is pretty," she said, regarding it with pride, "and I would make flowers too, but that thy father thinks it vain, and Friend Pemberton would set his bridge spectacles on his nose, and look at me, until I said naughty words, oh, very! Come out; I will find thee some ripe damsons, and save thee cake for thy supper, if Friend Warder does not eat it all. He is a little man, and eats much. A solicitous man," and she became of a sudden the person she had in mind, looking somehow feeble and cautious and uneasy, with arms at length, and the palms turned forward, so that I knew it for Joseph Warder, a frequent caller, of whom more hereafter.

"What is so--solicitous?" I said.

"Oh, too fearful concerning what may be thought of him. Vanity, vanity! Come, let us run down the garden. Canst thou catch me, Hugh!" And with this she fled away, under the back stoop and through the trees, light and active, her curls tumbling out, while I hurried after her, mindful of damsons, and wondering how much cake Friend Warder would leave for my comfort at evening.

Dear, ever dear lady, seen through the mist of years! None was like you, and none as dear, save one who had as brave a soul, but far other ways and charms.

Thus my uneventful life ran on, while I learned to write, and acquired, with other simple knowledge, enough of Latin and Greek to fit me for entrance at the academy, which Dr. Franklin had founded in 1750, in the hall on Fourth street, built for Whitefield's preaching.

At this time I fell much into the company of John Warder, a lad of my own age, and a son of that Joseph who liked cake, and was, as my mother said, solicitous. Most of the games of boys were not esteemed fitting by Friends, and hence we were somewhat limited in our resources; but to fish in the creek we were free; also to haunt the ships and hear sea yarns, and to skate in winter, were not forbidden. Jack Warder I took to because he was full of stories, and would imagine what things might chance to my father's ships in the West Indies; but why, in those early days, he liked me, I do not know.

Our school life with Dove ended after four years in an odd fashion. I was then about twelve, and had become a vigorous, daring boy, with, as it now seems to me, something of the fortunate gaiety of my mother. Other lads thought it singular that in peril I became strangely vivacious; but underneath I had a share of the relentless firmness of my father, and of his vast dislike of failure, and of his love of truth. I have often thought that the father in me saved me from the consequences of so much of my mother's gentler nature as might have done me harm in the rude conflicts of life.

David Dove, among other odd ways, devised a plan for punishing the unpunctual which had considerable success. One day, when I had far overstayed the hour of eight, by reason of having climbed into Friend Pemberton's gardens, where I was tempted by many green apples, I was met by four older boys. One had a lantern, which, with much laughter, he tied about my neck, and one, marching before, rang a bell. I had seen this queer punishment fall on others, and certainly the amusement shown by people in the streets would not have hurt me compared with the advantage of pockets full of apples, had I not of a sudden seen my father, who usually breakfasted at six, and was at his warehouse by seven. He looked at me composedly, but went past us saying nothing.

On my return about eleven, he unluckily met me in the garden, for I had gone the back way in order to hide my apples. I had an unpleasant half-hour, despite my mother's tears, and was sent at once to confess to Friend James Pemberton. The good man said I was a naughty boy, but must come later when the apples were red ripe, and I should take all I wanted, and I might fetch with me another boy, or even two. I never forgot this, and did him some good turns in after-years, and right gladly too.

In my own mind I associated David Dove with this painful interview with my father. I disliked him the more because, when the procession entered the school, a little girl for whom Warder and I had a boy friendship, in place of laughing, as did the rest, for some reason began to cry. This angered the master, who had the lack of self-control often seen in eccentric people. He asked why she cried, and on her sobbing out that it was because she was sorry for me, he bade her take off her stays. These being stiff, and worn outside the gown, would have made the punishment of the birch on the shoulders of trifling moment.

As it was usual to whip girls at school, the little maid said nothing, but did as she was bid, taking a sharp birching without a cry. Meanwhile I sat with my head in my hands, and my fingers in my ears lest I should hear her weeping. After school that evening, when all but Warder and I had wandered home, I wrote on the outside wall of the school-house with chalk, "David Dove Is A Cruel Beast," and went away somewhat better contented.

Now, with all his seeming dislike to use the rod, David had turns of severity, and then he was far more brutal than any man I have ever known. Therefore it did not surprise us next morning that the earlier scholars were looking with wonder and alarm at the sentence on the wall, when Dove, appearing behind us, ordered us to enter at once.

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