AOSA REUNION 2002
A RAMBLE THROUGH AYTON SCHOOL HISTORY
Madam Chairman, Old Scholars, and Friends,
When Sue Fox’s letter arrived inviting me to allow my name to go forward for Presidential nomination I had been working on the Archives section of the website – pouring over photographs going back to the late 1800s and taking long enough to look closely at the faces and people. My curiosity about the School – pupils and staff, all those years ago, therefore dictated the direction of my Address.
I would like to trace a little of our Ayton’s history; the personalities who made School what it was – then coming up-to-date and drawing the years together so they have relevance today, and hopefully into the future.
I started with 1841, the School’s first year and had a look at what was going on at the time:
Queen Victoria had been on the throne just 5-years; she had married Prince Albert in 1840 and a year later in 1841;
Edward, Prince of Wales was born;
Charles Dickens best-selling novel “The Old Curiosity Shop” was published.
Punch made its first appearance on the bookstalls of the day.
Thomas Cook arranged his first excursion (to a Temperance Meeting in Leicestershire).
The first complete National census was held - The population of Great Britain was 18.5 million (over 60 million now) – and by comparison USA was only 17 million (now 287 million – almost 1,700% increase).
And the adult population would all have had clear recollections of the Napoleonic Wars – Bonaparte had only been sent to St. Helena 26 years previously.
But, interesting as all this is, it does not tell us why Ayton School came to be. The local events leading up to 1841 are well documented, but why were so many leading Quakers of the same mind in that many new Schools were needed and this one in particular?
So I started delving – books and the Internet – and found myself well into the fringes of Quaker history. The more I delved the more fascinating it all became – and I soon had far too much material for this address today. I am conscious of my knowledgeable Quaker audience and ask your forgiveness now for any historical inaccuracies.
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This fascinating story is one of Quaker evolution and inevitably starts with George Fox. His original aim was not to create a sect, but to persuade his fellow men and women to worship honestly, not through the intermediary of the priesthood or any religious organisation but from within themselves.
This was the Civil War period – probably the greatest upheaval in English history. The traditional acceptance that all English people belonged to the National church as a matter of obligation had been destroyed forever. Fox and the Quaker movement were therefore, first and foremost, creatures of the English Revolution which, as a by-product, released the printed word from draconian censorship. Books and tracts flew off the presses in unprecedented numbers, devoured by a readership previously kept in check. Religious groups sprang up all over the Country mocking the monarchy and establishment to their discomfort.
But with the end of the Civil War came disillusionment with Oliver Cromwell, whom George Fox knew quite well, and he began to preach, powerful and to many piercing words for which he was imprisoned, again and again. It was Justice Bennet, on imprisoning George Fox in Derby, who first called Fox’s followers Quakers “because we bid them tremble at the word of God.” Fox traversed the country, and particularly the North, preaching as he went encountering large crowds, keen to hear him and anxious to share and identify with his teachings.
He made sense and recruitment to Quakerism was rapid. During the mid to late1600s numbers swelled to 40,000 and possibly even as many as 60,000 equalling Catholics and overtaking older and established sects. It was in the North, among people who felt ignored by Church, State, and landowners, that Quakerism first took root. And it was from the Northwest that the first Quaker ministers, both men and women, fanned out to take the message to other regions and towns.
These missionaries – 66 in total and almost all from Lancashire, Yorkshire and Westmoreland, travelled southwards in 1654-55 to London and Bristol, later to Scotland, Ireland, continental Europe and on to America. It was said at the time; “It seemed as if London had been invaded by ‘plain North Country ploughmen’.”
Financial structure and headquarters were established in the North and money raised from local sympathisers spent on sending missionaries to other parts of the Country and providing relief for Quakers in prison. Monthly Meeting was introduced “to look after the poor.” Elders from these meetings met other County representatives in the Yearly or General Meeting. Those originally attracted to Quakerism were by and large educated and collectively recorded their persecution – and later their evolution. It was a consequence of recording widespread persecution, some 15,000 during the Restoration period, that “Meetings for Sufferings” were convened and continued thereafter to record Quaker affairs, collecting what later become valuable statistics.
In the North Quakerism quickly assumed an organisational structure, which was to survive waves of persecution in later years – fundamental to long-term survival of the Society of Friends. What had made Quakers so dangerous to the Establishment was their resolute refusal to accept authority. “These Vipers” said one MP “are crept into the bowels of your commonwealth and the government too…They grow numerous, and swarm all the nation over; every county, every parish.” It was Quaker reaction to the extent and extremes of persecution from which the “peace principle” gradually evolved.
(I have to digress for a moment – when I came to Ayton as an 8-year-old during the War I had been briefed about Quakerism including pacifism, so imaging my horror on my first Sunday evening hearing “Onward Christian Soldiers” being sung with gusto!)
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