[PICKWORTH, Henry]

To the Right Honourable, and Honourable, The Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and commons, in Parliament Assembled. The Humble Petition of Henry Pickworth, of New Sleeford in the County of Lincoln; in behalf of himself and many others of his long misled friends, call'd Quakers; over whom he hath been elected Overseer and Elder, according to the Discipline Practised among Them [caption title]

[London: 1714]. Broadsheet, 14 x 9 inches. [1]p., plus printed docket title on verso. Disbound. Early folds and early stab holes in left margin. Small portion of inner margin excised, with no loss to text. Some foxing. Very good.

Henry Pickworth (1673?-1738?) was an English Quaker who, in 1701, challenged the Quaker apostate Francis Bugg to visit New Sleaford, Lincolnshire, and debate him at a public conference. Bugg accepted and prevailed before the judges and clergymen assembled, which led to the public burning of two Quaker books and the publication of numerous pamphlets attacking Bugg by Pickworth. As the controversy died down, however, Pickworth was won over by Bugg and soon began writing against the Quakers and attending the annual Friends' meeting in London to present his protests and testimonies. Eventually, in June 1714, the Lincoln quarterly meeting disowned him. In this rare and historically noted petition, Pickworth lobbies Parliament to grant him another public conference in Lincolnshire, this time against the Quakers of his home meeting. He asks that members of the Lincoln meeting be convened "to one against me, in order to their Defences, from the Charges of Error, Heresy, Uncharity, Falshood, Evasion, Inconsistency, Innovation, Imposition, Infidelity, Hypocrisy, Pride, Railery, Apostasy, Perjury, Idolatry, villainy, Blasphemy, Abomination, Confusion, and worse than Turkish Tyranny in their Church Capacity." He was denied and subsequently issued a book with a title based on the series of invectives above (itself printed earlier in a half-sheet Pickworth published in 1711). In addition to being an important artifact of early 18th-century Quaker history, the document is among the first examples of lobbying literature, which first began proliferating during the major changes in British government in the mid-1710s. ESTC records four copies in the U.K. and one in the U.S., at Haverford College.

DNB XV, p.1133; Smith, A Descriptive Catalogue of Friends' Books, Vol. II, p.416.

Item #21189

Price: $475.00