Robert Barclay

“ Dear Robert Barclay,
With my love to thee and thy Father and all the rest of the faithful friends in the holy peaceable truth, that is over all and changes not. I am sorry to hear that there should be any difference or distance amongst any Friends in your parts, and that they should not keep in the power of the Lord to the spreading of the truth abroad, and such great want and need as there is in your country. For all should be in the Gospel of peace, in the power of God in which enmity cannot come, and [Pg 130] in the peaceable wisdom which is easy to be entreated. ”

“ As several eminent men among those called Quakers, were taken away by death, so others came in who filled their places; among these, and none of the least was Robert Barclay, son of colonel David Barclay, descended of the ancient and famous family of the Barclays, and of Katharine Gordon, from the house of the dukes of Gordon. This [Pg 75] his son Robert being born at Edinburgh, in the year 1648, was educated in France and trained up in literature, having lived some years with his uncle at Paris, where the Papists were very active to bring him over to their religion. ”

“ Soon after his marriage, Robert Barclay narrowly missed a first taste of prison life. The "monthly meeting" at Aberdeen (the gathering of the local congregations for denominational business, always preceded by worship) was entered by officers sent by the magistrates to disperse the assembly. They violently dragged to the Council House all the men who were present. There the magistrates endeavoured by fair words to induce them to give up their meeting, and then let them go. If they had had more experience of Friends they would have anticipated what followed. ”

“ The very first time that Robert Barclay attended a Friends' meeting he was struck by the awful Presence there; he felt that God was in that place. Some minister who was present used these epigrammatic words, which are said to have [Pg 91] made a great impression on him. "In stilness there is fulness, in fulness there is nothingness, in nothingness there are all things." It is true that we are told that Sir John Swintoune and another Friend named Halliday were specially helpful to him at this critical time. ”

“ His father was converted to quakerism, through the influence, it is said, of a fellow-prisoner in Edinburgh, James Swinton, and declared his adhesion to the sect in 1666. Robert Barclay followed his father's example in 1667. He studied hard at this time; he learned Greek and Hebrew, being already a French and Latin scholar, and read the early fathers, and ecclesiastical history. In February 1670 he married one of his own persuasion, Christian, daughter of Gilbert Mollison, an Aberdeen merchant, by his wife, Margaret, an early convert to quakerism. ”

“ After attending the Yearly Meeting in London, Robert Barclay went on a mission to the Continent. Of this visit, unfortunately, we have no record. Probably, one object for which he made it was to see to the publication of his Apology in Amsterdam. But one incident of the journey is full of interest. He visited Elizabeth, Princess Palatine of the Rhine, granddaughter of James I. and aunt of George I.; an accomplished lady and a most exemplary ruler. ”

“ Barclay notices (Inner Life, p. 11) that, with all its freedom, the society from the first was not ‘independent’ but ‘connexional’ in its character. There is shrewdness in Baxter's remark that the quakers were ‘the ranters revers'd,’ turned from wild extravagances to ‘extream austerity’ (Calamy, Abridgement, 1713, p. 102) . Baxter ascribes the change to Penn. But the ranter spirit reached its climax and its fall in the Bristol ride (1656) of James Nayler [q. v.] , who died in 1660, many years before the adhesion of either Robert Barclay (1667) or William Penn (1668) . ”

“ Short account of the Life and Writings of Robert Barclay, published at Philadelphia, in 1805.
Among Robert Barclay's other valuable works, are his "Catechism and Confession of Faith," first published in 1673; the "Anarchy of the Ranters," in 1677; and a treatise on "Universal Love," in 1777. ”

“ This year deceased Alexander Parker, sometimes mentioned in this history, being a man not only of a godly life and conversation, but also of a godly mien and grave deportment. In the following year, viz. that of 1690, Robert Barclay also departed this life, a man of eminent gifts and great endowments, expert not only in the languages of the learned, but also well versed in the writings of the ancient fathers, and other ecclesiastical writers, and furnished with a great understanding, being not only of a sound judgment, but also strong in arguments, and cheerful in sufferings. ”

“ Death is merely ascending from a lower and narrower chamber to one higher and holier.'"
[23] He goes on to say, writing in 1677, "About a year since, Robert Barclay and Benjamin Furly took that city in the way from Frederickstadt to Amsterdam, and gave them a visit; in which they informed them somewhat of Friends' principles, and recommended the Testimony of Truth to them as both a nearer and more certain thing than the utmost of De Labadie's doctrine. They left them tender and loving." Travels in Holland, Penn's Select Works, p. ”

“ Most of the party were men who had not yet arrived to middle age, if we except the clericals, who were much more advanced in life; and any one, who had ever fallen in with the smuggling lugger and its crew, would have had no difficulty in recognising many of them, in the well-attired and evidently high-born and well-educated young men who were seated or standing in the room. Among them Sir Robert Barclay was eminently conspicuous; he was standing by the fire conversing with two of the ecclesiastics. ”

“ Gadzooks! confess, Robert Barton, when first thou camest aboard thou couldst neither hand, reef, nor steer, clamber aloft, grease a mast, handle oar, culverin, or caliver. All these I taught him, your majesty, and made a man and a sailor of him!"
"This day makes poor David Falconer the envy and the hatred of the nobles," said Barclay the translator to Father Zuill.
"'Tis false, sirrah," growled the laird of Sauchie, who overheard the remark, which was made a little too audibly; "he is a brave fellow, who has won his spurs as he wins his daily bread by knight's service and the sword. ”

“ A lengthened walk through field and pasture brought us to the "Sarcophagus" of the Barclay family, located upon an eminence overlooking the [203] estate and its surrounding country, including Stonehaven and parts of the German Ocean. The building is of stone, with recesses in the interior walls containing tablets descriptive of members of the family, from Colonel David Barclay to Robert the Younger, who died in 1854, there being five in a direct line of the name of Robert. ”

“ Presented to Captain Robert H. Barclay, of His Majesty’s royal navy, by the inhabitants of Quebec, in testimony of the sense they justly entertain of the exalted courage and heroic valour displayed by him, and by the officers, seamen, and soldiers, of the flotilla under his command, in an action with a greatly superior force of the enemy, upon Lake Erie, on the 10th day of September, 1813; when the presence of a few additional seamen was only wanting to have effected the total discomfiture of the hostile squadron. ”

“ It seems so far creditable to a government which has a good many sins at its charge, that, when this case came before the Duke of York and the Privy Council, on John Barclay’s petition, and both sides had been heard—namely, the uncle on one side, and the Lady Rowallan, with the three curators, Montgomery younger of Skelmorley, the Laird of Dunlop, and Mr John Stirling, minister of Irvine, on the other—they decided that the young Barclay was of age to act and choose curators for himself, and that the defenders were not bound to produce him in court ”

“ Captain Barclay proceeded to Amherstburg, where he arrived with only four commissioned officers and nineteen seamen, about the middle of June, at which time the enemy’s naval force on Lake Erie consisted of seven vessels, all well equipped and manned, under the orders of Captain Oliver Hazard Perry, of the United States navy. ”

“ Could the Admiral have spared some British seamen as well as officers, it is probable that the Americans might have been attacked with success on their return from the capture of York; but, as it was, acting Commander Barclay’s whole attention was necessarily confined to the equipment of a squadron at Kingston, on Lake Ontario, where he arrived just before the commencement of the enemy’s operations against the infant capital of Upper Canada. ”

“ The following authentic statement will place the superiority of the enemy beyond a doubt:
The guns of the Caledonia, and of all the American schooners, were mounted on pivots; the broadside weight of metal on the part of the enemy was consequently 928 pounds, – on that of the British only 478. The former had at least 580 picked men; the latter not more than 345 persons of every description.
Early in September, 1813, Captain Barclay received a small draught of seamen from the Dover troop-ship, then in the river St. Lawrence ”

“ Bompart, near the coast of Ireland, Oct. 12th following ; at the capture of la Loire frigate, on the 18th of the same month [1] ; at the landing of arms, &c. for the royalists on the coast of la Vendee, in 1799; at the capture of a French letter of marque, a privateer of 18 guns and 194 men, two large Spanish gun-vessels, and seven sail of merchantmen (the latter taken under the batteries between Tariffa and Algeziras) in 1800; and at the capture of la Furie French privateer, April 13th, 1801 [2] .
Mr. Barclay passed his examination at Malta, in Dec. 1804 ”

“ Folio.
[Sir William Barclay or Berkley was probably related to Sir Richard Barclay, author of "A Discourse of the Felicity of Man," first printed in 1598. He wrote, besides the "Lost Lady," a "Description of Virginia." An account of him will be found in Bliss's edition of Wood's "Athenæ," iii. 1111-12.
"The Lost Lady" was reprinted by Dodsley in 1744, but excluded from the second and third editions of the collection.]
[Pg 539]
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ. [350] Men.
Lysicles. Eugenio. Agenor. Cleon. Ergasto. Phormio. Pindarus. Physician. Women.
Milesia. Hermione. Irene. Phillida. Acanthe. ”

“ I will assure you I think not less myself; but you know when a body once falls-to they never know rightly where to leave-off, and so fares [it] with me. So might I see a good sight upon the thing that I would see it upon, as when I began to tell you about Andrew Hey’s hairy face, as I thought no more of landing you in the runnel of Digran, than William of Troal did of going to Belmunt in his shirts one night in spring, that his wife bade him set a-jar the door [to see] if the speckled cow was come home. ”

“ Yonder that deep gash in the sod at the left hides a woman's face—pale, wasted, dead on her pillow; and that clean black streak on the ebony cane—that is a tear, and in the tear is a girl's face and back of hers shimmers a boy's countenance. All of John Barclay's life and hopes and dreams and visions are spread out before him on the ground. So he closes his eyes, and braces his soul, and then, having risen, whistles as he limps lightly—for a man past fifty—down to the boat. ”

“ So the Question is First, Whether the Civil Magistrate hath Power to force Men in Things religious to do contrary to their Conscience; and if they will not, to punish them in their Goods, Liberties, and Lives? This we hold in the Negative. ”

“ Berkeley was well enough to meet with in men's society, at mess, on parade, on the turf, or in the hunting-field; but though handsome and perfectly well-bred, for his manners were generally unexceptionable, he was not a man for the drawing-room. He was master of a splendid fortune, which was left him by his father, a plain old Scotchman, who had begun life as a drayman, and whose patronymic was simply John Dewar Barclay. ”

“ A red bird was calling in the woods near by, and the soft south wind had spring in it as it blew across the veil of waters that hid the dam. John Barclay's head was full of music, and he was lounging across the bridge from the mill on his way home to try his new pipe organ. He had spent four hours the day before at his organ bench, [Pg 320] trying to teach his lame foot to keep up with his strong foot. So when General Ward overhauled him, Barclay was annoyed. He was not the man to have his purposes crossed, even when they were whims. ”

“ However Barclay urges and pleads with her, her reply still is "I must go by my light." "I cannot submit to the opinions or practice of others, though they have more light than myself." [24]
[24] Not that Barclay aimed at proselytising, but he wished her to take the course which seemed to him the necessary outcome of her views. "I pretend to be no sect master," he writes, "and disgust all such."
At Herford, Barclay left his friends and returned to Amsterdam. In September we find him in London, using his influence with the Duke of York to procure liberty for Friends in Scotland. ”

“ Shall we sit gawking while a boy gropes his way out of a man's life, back through forty years, and puts his head in shame and sorrow against a mother's breast? How he stumbles and falters and halts, as the truth comes out—and it must come out; on the whole the best thing there is to say of John Barclay on that fateful December day in the year of our Lord 1903 is that he did not let his mother learn the truth from any lips but his. And so it follows naturally, because he was brave and kind, that instead of having to strengthen her, she sustained him—she in her seventies, he in his fifties. ”