Una quacchera a Lisbona. I viaggi e gli scritti di Ann Gargill

[A Quaker in Lisbon: the Travels and the Writings of Ann Gargill] Anne Gargill was born in Swine (East Riding) in 1625. According to an unsubstantiated declaration made in 1659 by her acquaintance Katharine Evans to the Inquisition authorities of Malta, Anne Gargill was a Catholic before her conversion to Quakerism in the early 1650s. Anne Gargill was probably already a Quaker in London in 1654. Charles Leslie asserts that when George Fox first came to London in that year she “threw her self upon her Knees, betwixt his Feet; and cry’d out to him, Thou art the Son of the Living God!.” This story was repeated by John Stillingflee in Seasonable Advice concerning Quakerism in 1702 to which the Quaker Daniel Phillips replied in 1703 with Vindiciae Veritatis…. Phillips rejects the account and adds that Anne Gargill, “was a Ranter, and reputed as such” before the supposed episode and that “she was publickly disowned” by the Quakers a “few Weeks after.” Philipps connects Anne Gargill with the “Set of Women tinctured with the Spirit of Ranterism” rejected by the Friends with the exception of James Nayler who afterwards “was deluded by them.” Philipps, who writes his account around fifty years after the episode, is certainly wrong in asserting that she was disowned by Friends at that time but it is possible that Anne Gargill already during her stay in London effectively showed her dissention towards the Quaker leaders in London. In January 1656 she published the short pamphlet A Warning to all the World. Shortly afterwards she went to Plymouth with the intention of going to Spain to evangelise, writing a letter to Fox prior to her departure from London. Her ship Lisbon at the end of April and upon landing Gargill directed herself to the King’s palace, but when she discovered that he wasn’t there she returned to the ship. On 2 May, two Inquisition officials went aboard the ship and spoke with her. Three days later she was brought to the Inquisition palace in Lisbon and interrogated. The Inquisition decided to release her, fearing that her detention would cause diplomatic problems with England, but ordered her to set out for England with the first ship. In September 1656 Ann Gargill published A brief discovery of that which is called the Popish Religion. In 1659, Katherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers told the Maltese Inquisitor that Anne Gargill had founded Quaker congregations in Spain. In the spring of 1657 Anne Gargill was in Holland where she caused discord and dissent in the Quaker community of Amsterdam, and for this reason was disowned by the Quaker leaders. In the following months a small group formed around her in Amsterdam. A woman of strong spirituality and keen intelligence (as we can glean from her writings and from the reports of the Lisbon Inquisition) she probably opposed the process of organisation of Quakerism that followed Nayler’s entry into Bristol. The story of Gargill is extremely interesting because it symbolizes some of the contradictions of early Quakerism. A movement that emerged as the supreme instance of freedom of the Spirit, original Quakerism experienced in the protagonism of women as Gargill one of its characteristics. The organizational process, a direct result of increasing repression, forced the more reasonable leaders of the movement to abandon some of the characteristics of its early early days and to define a Quaker theology that would not limit itself to the enthusiastic action of the Spirit within every man and every woman. Some people of more intense spirituality opposed this development, and were marginalized or expelled by the movement; this was the case of Anne Gargill. It is significant that among those who opposed the hierarchicalization of the movement a significant number were those, like Gargill, had excelled in the missionary activity (Villani also cites Perrot who, after having been a prisoner of the Roman Inquisition would lead a schism among the Quakers on the issue of the freedom of the Spirit). For those who had risked their lives to preach the free gospel of Inner Light it was intolerable to think that their movement would progressively structure along the lines of other churches with a hierarchy, a Church discipline, and a defined credo. Gargill’s prudent and cautious responses to the Portuguese inquisitors – examined by Villani in the article – would suffice to prove that not everyone who can be considered part of this extreme wing of Quakerism were frantics, led by their intransigence to risky headlong rush. However, it is highly probable that if they had taken over the movement leadership and not the more prosaic common sence of George Fox and his supporters, the movement would hardly have escaped unscathed the storm of the Restoration. The price that Quakerism paid to the marginalizing and expulsion of these restless spirits, however, was undoubtedly that of a radical transformation. If at the beginning of the movement the only article of belief was that you had to listen to “that something of God” present in every man and woman, Quakerism gradually became a true Church to which members must conform, not to risk excommunication and expulsion. And so, it is not coincidental that among those who most vigorously opposed to this outcome there were people like Gargill who had risked their lives to assert the freedom of conscience in Catholic countries.