WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Benjamin Lay 0:00:02.520 --> 0:00:06.080 Happy Saturday. Not long ago, we read an email from 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:10.320 listener Miranda about Judith Sargent Murray, who was a Universalist 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:15.120 whose family had enslaved household servants, but as a denomination 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:20.639 Universalists are usually more associated with the abolition movement. I said, 0:00:20.640 --> 0:00:23.880 this reminded me of Benjamin Lay, who was a Quaker 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:27.240 at a time before the Religious Society of Friends became 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:33.080 actively abolitionist, and was expelled from various Quaker meetings in 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:38.280 part for his vocal opposition to slavery, including by prominent 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:41.400 members of those meetings. We said at the time we 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:44.640 might run our episode on Benjamin Lay as a Saturday classic, 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:47.720 and here it is. The original came out on August 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:55.360 twenty first, twenty nineteen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed 0:00:55.360 --> 0:01:05.600 in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and Welcome 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:09.040 to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:12.280 Several times in previous episodes we have talked about the 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:15.720 role of Quakers, who are also called Friends, in the 0:01:15.800 --> 0:01:19.880 abolition of slavery. We haven't, though, really talked about the 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:23.800 Religious Society of Friends before it became such a visible 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:27.959 part in the movement for abolition. Benjamin Lay was a 0:01:28.000 --> 0:01:31.200 Quaker and a radical abolitionist who lived in this period 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:35.760 between when the Religious Society of Friends started and when 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:40.160 it started formally banning slave ownership among its members. During 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:43.160 that time, there were actually a lot of Quaker slave owners, 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:46.440 especially among the more wealthy and more powerful members, and 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:51.400 Lay was incredibly outspoken about this issue in an incredibly 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:56.840 visible and memorable way. In the words of Robert's Vox, 0:01:56.880 --> 0:01:59.640 who wrote a brief biography of Lay in the nineteenth century, 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:04.720 if the comparison be admissible, he appeared rather like the comet, 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:08.600 which threatens, in its irregular course the destruction of the 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:11.520 worlds near which it passes, than is one of those 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:15.720 tranquil orbs which hold their accustomed place and dispense their 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:19.200 light in the harmonious order of heaven. So because of 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:22.600 this comet like behavior and this advocacy, Benjamin Lay was 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:26.560 disowned from multiple Quaker meetings. He's been described as the 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:30.720 most frequently disowned Quaker of his time. We're going to 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:32.800 talk more about what that means and how that happened 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:34.920 in a bit, and this is who we are talking 0:02:34.960 --> 0:02:37.880 about today. I like that there's a superlative of most 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:43.919 disowned Quake Yes, like Who's number two. He was also 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:48.680 the last Quaker known to be disowned for advocating against 0:02:49.000 --> 0:02:52.520 slavery and for the abolition of slavery, So he was 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:55.240 not the only person to be disowned, but he was 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.760 disowned a lot. He's the most last owned for this reason. 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:02.240 Benjamin Lay He was born in Essex County, England, on 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:05.680 April twenty sixth, sixteen eighty two. His parents, William and 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:08.800 Prudence Lay, were of course Quakers, as were his grandparents, 0:03:09.240 --> 0:03:12.480 and Benjamin's father had a small farm, but his family 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:15.000 did not have a lot of money, so Benjamin didn't 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:17.720 really have much of a formal education. He did a 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:20.680 lot of self study later in his life, though he 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:25.720 liked to call himself just a poor, illiterate sailor. Eventually 0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:28.799 he was very widely and well read, and when he 0:03:28.840 --> 0:03:31.160 was in his teens, Benjamin went to live on his 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:34.200 brother's farm, where he worked as a shepherd. This is 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:37.440 something he seems to have really dearly loved, but his 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:41.360 time as a shepherd was temporary. Eventually he was apprenticed 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:43.880 to a glove maker, and that was something he did 0:03:43.920 --> 0:03:46.920 not enjoy at all. So, when he was about twenty 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:49.600 one years old, he left and he went to London 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:52.720 to become a sailor instead. Having made some gloves, I 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:55.160 can understand if it's not for you, it's really not free. 0:03:55.840 --> 0:03:58.480 He did not like it one bit. This was an 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:00.680 interesting choice for him to have made this move to 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:03.920 become a sailor. He was expected to inherit a family 0:04:04.040 --> 0:04:06.240 farm and he was giving that up by becoming a 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:10.640 sailor instead. He also had cayphosis, or an excessive front 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:13.400 to back curvature of the spine, as well as some 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:16.560 form of dwarfism, and this would have made some of 0:04:16.600 --> 0:04:19.400 the work on a ship far more challenging for him. 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:23.000 But it also would have allowed him to maneuver into 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:26.159 tight spaces and through the rigging in the ways that 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:29.680 larger men really couldn't lay. Was a sailor for about 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:32.640 twelve years, and during that time when he wasn't at sea, 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:35.680 he usually lived in London. He also spent some time 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:38.760 in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, visiting various sites 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:41.520 that had been mentioned in the Bible. Otherwise, we don't 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:44.159 have a whole lot of detail about these years at sea, 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:47.320 but it is where Lay started learning about the horrors 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:50.960 of the transatlantic slave trade. He heard these stories from 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:54.000 men who had either worked on slave ships themselves or 0:04:54.000 --> 0:04:56.960 had heard about it from other sailors. At some point 0:04:57.040 --> 0:05:00.560 during these years, Lay met Sarah Smith of Debtford, England. 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:03.440 Sarah had become a Quaker in her youth, and by 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:07.599 seventeen twelve she was an approved minister. Sarah's late father 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:10.160 had been a plasterer, and if her mother was still 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:12.920 living when she and Benjamin met, she had died by 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:16.200 the time that they married. Like Benjamin, Sarah had both 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:19.960 Cayphosis and Dwarfism, and in their life together people sometimes 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:24.000 commented on how much they resembled each other. Benjamin himself 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:27.440 described them as quote being pretty much alike in stature 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:31.159 and other ways. In seventeen sixteen, when he was thirty 0:05:31.160 --> 0:05:34.159 four and she was four or five years older, Benjamin 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:37.640 started trying to get the necessary permissions to marry Sarah, 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:41.360 but this presented a problem. In order to marry within 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:44.039 the religious society of Friends, you had to be a 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:48.080 member in good standing. But Benjamin had made some waves 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:51.200 in his home congregation in London, which was Devonshire House. 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:55.240 Monthly meeting. When the Quaker movement was very first evolving 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:57.839 in Britain in the mid sixteen hundreds, a lot of 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:01.039 the time it was really confrontational. One of the movement's 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:03.880 core beliefs was that each person could have a direct 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:07.279 relationship with God, and in terms of the movement's ideals, 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:10.919 it didn't have any sort of hierarchy. Early Quakers also 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:15.960 spoke out against established churches and their leaders, including during services, 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:19.240 but by the time Benjamin Lay came along, the Religious 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:23.240 Society of Friends had become much more conservative, speaking out 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:27.240 against ministers and elders and weighty friends, which as a 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:31.719 term for influential Quakers, was just not done. Benjamin did it, 0:06:31.760 --> 0:06:35.240 though we don't know what exactly he had been criticizing 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:39.520 in Devonshire. He had a particular dislike for vanity, pride 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:42.960 and covetousness, and he also didn't like preaching that seemed 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:45.800 like the minister's own words rather than the word of God. 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:49.440 Based on later incidents that were more well documented, it 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:52.360 could have been any number of things, but whatever it was, 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:54.720 he was in enough trouble over it that he did 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:58.080 not go directly to Devonshire House Monthly meeting to ask 0:06:58.160 --> 0:07:02.400 for the certificate that he needed to marry his beloved. Instead, 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:05.640 he worked on a ship that crossed the Atlantic Ocean, 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:08.720 and in Salem, Massachusetts, he went to the local Quaker 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:11.440 meeting house there and said that he wanted to marry 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:15.760 Sarah Smith of Deptford. In seventeen seventeen, the Salem Congregation 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:19.920 wrote to Devonshire House. After some discussion, Devonshire House wrote 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:23.240 back that Benjamin was quote free and clear from all 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:26.400 persons here relating to marriage, and also free and clear 0:07:26.480 --> 0:07:29.360 of debts so far as we know. But their letter 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:32.120 went on to say that they thought Benjamin was quote 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:34.960 convinced of the truth, but for want of keeping low 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:38.840 and humble in his mind, hath by an indiscreet zeal, 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:41.920 been too forward to appear in our public meetings, to 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:46.600 the uneasiness of friends. Look, he's not in trouble, but 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:52.320 he is a SaaS pants. Yeah, and it's possible that 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:55.320 he may have been criticizing people who who were slave 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:57.280 owners at this point. That seems to have come along 0:07:57.400 --> 0:07:59.760 much later into his line of thought. So I think 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:02.360 this was more like if he didn't like your face, 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:05.080 do you would tell you that he didn't like your face. 0:08:05.600 --> 0:08:08.040 If he didn't like your preaching, same deal. He's an 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:11.440 upstart at heart. Once he got back to England with 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:16.280 that somewhat reluctant approval, Benjamin continued to criticize ministers and 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:19.760 others at Devonshire House and at other Quaker meetings in 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:23.360 and around London, where he also worshiped. He roused enough 0:08:23.440 --> 0:08:27.000 rabble the Devonshire House refused to give him the formal 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:30.560 certificate that he needed for marriage. He appealed their refusal 0:08:30.600 --> 0:08:34.080 to the London Quarterly Meeting, which investigated the situation and 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:36.720 said that while it didn't approve of his behavior, it 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:40.239 also did not approve of Devonshire House withholding his certificate. 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:45.000 So although Devonshire House Monthly Meeting did issue the certificate, 0:08:45.080 --> 0:08:49.199 it also ultimately disowned Benjamin. It said something to the 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:52.680 effect that couldn't consider him part of their number. That 0:08:52.800 --> 0:08:56.000 meant that he was allowed to still worship there, but 0:08:56.080 --> 0:08:58.520 he wasn't considered a member in good standing, and he 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:02.520 wasn't allowed to take part in business meetings. Benjamin and 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:06.600 Sarah did finally marry in Deptford on July tenth, seventeen eighteen. 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:10.320 They left London shortly thereafter and moved to Barbados, which 0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:12.960 was also home to a Quaker community, and we're going 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:15.280 to get into their time there after. We first paused 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:28.920 for a little sponsor break. When Benjamin and Sarah Lay 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:32.360 got to Barbados, Benjamin established himself as a merchant with 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:35.080 a small shop that was stocked with provisions that he'd 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:39.280 bought before leaving England. Before long, they experienced a series 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:42.679 of small thefts from this store, and if Benjamin was 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:45.480 able to catch the perpetrator, he'd punish them with a lash, 0:09:45.520 --> 0:09:48.560 which was a pretty common punishment for theft at the time. 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:52.880 But soon Lay realized that the enslaved people who were 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:56.520 stealing from his store were driven to it by absolutely 0:09:56.760 --> 0:10:01.280 desperate circumstances. They were either stealing food because they were starving, 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:03.920 or they were stealing items that they could sell or 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:08.320 trade for food. So upon this revelation, Benjamin was full 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:10.800 of remorse for what he had done, and he and 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:13.800 Sarah set up an informal ministry for the enslaved people 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:16.760 of Barbados. They fed as many as they could with 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:19.520 what they had, although it was often spoiled in the 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:23.360 Caribbean heat, and they established a Sunday School, where Benjamin 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:26.920 both taught and counseled enslaved people and listened to them 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:30.120 as they talked about their own lives and experiences. So 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:33.000 by listening to the words of the people around them 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:36.080 and by their own observations, the Lays quickly learned that 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:40.960 conditions in Barbados were really horrific. They repeatedly witnessed people 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:45.760 collapsing from exhaustion and overwork. One enslaved man that Benjamin knew, 0:10:45.760 --> 0:10:48.480 took his own life rather than continuing to be subjected 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:51.960 to regular beatings. At one point, Sarah was going to 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:54.760 visit another Quaker who was living nearby, and on our 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:58.360 way there she found a man hanging, in Benjamin's words 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:02.720 quote stark naked, trembling and shivering, with such a flood 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:06.120 of blood under him that so surprised the little woman 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:09.520 she could scarce contain. So when Sarah got to the 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:11.840 house the people she was visiting, she asked them what 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:14.240 was going on, and they told her that this man 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:17.600 was being punished for quote absconding. A day or two, 0:11:18.080 --> 0:11:21.960 this experience in Barbados influenced not only Benjamin Lay's views 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:25.280 on slavery, but also his views on Africans and people 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:28.439 of African descent in general. A lot of the other 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:30.920 white abolitionists that we have talked about on the show 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:34.520 argued that slavery was immoral, but they were also racist. 0:11:35.160 --> 0:11:38.640 But Lay really believes that all people were equal, later writing, 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:41.800 for example, quote the many hundreds of thousands that are 0:11:41.800 --> 0:11:44.760 now in slavery, were they at liberty as we are 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:49.840 had the same education, learning conversation books, sweet communion, and 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:53.679 our religious assemblies. I believe many of them would exceed 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:57.720 many of their tyrant masters in piety, virtue, and godliness, 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:00.880 and their bright genius which I know they have, would 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:03.840 be enlivened for I have conversed with many of them. 0:12:04.000 --> 0:12:07.760 For liberty is life and slavery is death. Yeah. One 0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:09.440 of the other things that gets pointed out about his 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:11.520 writing a lot is that there were a lot of 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:16.080 abolitionists that still talked about Africans and people of African 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:20.160 descent as savages, and he reserved that kind of language 0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:23.360 for the people who owned slaves. He never used that 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:26.520 sort of language about people who were enslaved or people 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:30.200 who were of African descent. So Sarah and Benjamin only 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:32.280 stayed in Barbados for about a year and a half. 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:36.720 Their work with the enslaved population really, of course, drew 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:40.199 the ire of the slave owning community. They faced harassment 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:43.520 and threats over it. Sarah was also afraid that if 0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:47.080 they stayed there they would eventually become desensitized to what 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:49.880 they were seeing, so in seventeen twenty they went back 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:52.760 to London, where Benjamin seems to have re established his 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:56.960 relationship with the Devonshire House Monthly Meeting. But soon Benjamin 0:12:57.040 --> 0:13:00.760 was once again speaking out against other Quakers. In September 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:04.400 seventeen twenty, a complaint was recorded that he had disturbed 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.960 Zachary Routh in his public testimony and also had called 0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:11.320 him a drunkard and a sinner. After some back and forth, 0:13:11.400 --> 0:13:14.640 a man named Joseph Norris brought Benjamin a notice from 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:19.080 a meeting about his misbehavior, and Benjamin threw that notice 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:22.360 out the window. He was disowned for a second time, 0:13:22.800 --> 0:13:25.120 and then he and Sarah moved to Colchester, which is 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:29.440 northeast of London. And Colchester, Benjamin had a long, confusing 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:33.040 and frankly pretty petty seeming dispute with the Colchester two 0:13:33.040 --> 0:13:36.840 weeks meeting. This dispute went on for years, with Benjamin 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:40.559 criticizing people and then the meeting demanding that he apologized, 0:13:40.679 --> 0:13:43.800 and then he would double down or refuse to apologize 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:47.320 or give kind of a non apology. Sometimes it seems 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:51.000 as though Sarah tried to smooth things over here, especially 0:13:51.559 --> 0:13:54.440 at various times she was preparing to travel without him 0:13:54.520 --> 0:13:56.880 as a minister and to be gone for a long time. 0:13:57.000 --> 0:14:01.120 She was concerned about his being isolated from his religious 0:14:01.160 --> 0:14:04.760 community while she was gone. The Colchester Two Weeks Meeting 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:08.520 wanted to disown Benjamin, but couldn't because he was still 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:12.040 disowned from Devonshire House Monthly Meeting. He'd never formally become 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:16.240 a member of Colchester Two Weeks Meeting. And then Benjamin 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:19.600 and Sarah started attending a different Colchester meeting, the Colchester 0:14:19.720 --> 0:14:23.080 Monthly Meeting, which added another layer of strife thanks to 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:27.280 an apparent power struggle between those two different Colchester meetings. 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:30.280 In the middle of all this dispute, Benjamin and Sarah 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:34.000 disappear from the record for about three years. It's possible 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:36.240 that they moved somewhere else and became part of a 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:39.520 congregation where Benjamin's behavior didn't draw any of this kind 0:14:39.520 --> 0:14:42.720 of notice or he might have gone traveling with her 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:46.920 while she worked as a minister. Regardless, in seventeen twenty nine, 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:49.840 they were back in Colchester trying to make arrangements to 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:53.720 immigrate to Pennsylvania. The Colony of Pennsylvania had been founded 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:57.040 by William Penn in sixteen eighty one in part to 0:14:57.120 --> 0:14:59.400 be a home for Quakers who were facing violence and 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:02.960 persecution in Europe. He called it his Holy Experiment, and 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:06.720 he wanted it to follow Quaker ideals. Penn wanted fair 0:15:06.760 --> 0:15:10.160 treatment of the native people, no military, and a government 0:15:10.200 --> 0:15:14.200 that ran on principles of freedom, including religious liberty, access 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:18.000 to education, and universal suffrage for men. So this was 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:20.760 an obvious place for the Lays to want to move. 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:24.640 But once again, to immigrate to Pennsylvania, they needed a 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:29.360 certificate from a Quaker meeting in England. Colchester Monthly Meeting 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:33.120 may be motivated by the idea of Benjamin Lay living 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:37.960 somewhere else, agreed to provide the certificate if Benjamin made 0:15:38.000 --> 0:15:41.840 amends with Devonshire House, which he did on November third, 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:45.520 seventeen thirty one. Devonshire House sent a letter to Colchester 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:50.600 Monthly Meeting clearing Benjamin of wrongdoing Colchester Monthly Meeting received 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:53.760 Benjamin as a member and issued the certificate for him 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:58.040 to move to Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, the Colchester two weeks Meeting, 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:01.400 still very mad at him, wrote letters ahead of him, 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:04.320 warning Quakers in Pennsylvania about what they were in for. 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:08.400 I'm wildly abused by all of the letters and the like. 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:15.200 It's very ninth grade drama, and somewhat it is. Do 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:18.920 you like, Benjamin? Yes? Box, no box. When the Lays 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:22.880 got to Philadelphia, Benjamin opened a bookshop specializing in books 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:26.440 by Quakers, as well as psalters, Bibles, and classical works 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:30.320 of literature. But he and Sarah were dismayed to discover that, 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:33.240 in spite of everything that they had imagined about Penn's 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:38.160 Holy Experiment and its dedication to Quaker ideals, slavery was 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:41.600 still practiced in the colony. About ten percent of the 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:45.400 population of Philadelphia was enslaved, and about half the membership 0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:49.800 of the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting owned slaves. Among the wealthiest 0:16:49.800 --> 0:16:52.760 and most powerful friends in the congregation that number was 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:56.640 even higher. Rather than advocating the abolition of slavery, the 0:16:56.680 --> 0:17:00.400 religious Society of Friends was more likely to advocate treating 0:17:00.480 --> 0:17:04.320 enslaved people humanly, or freeing people after a certain number 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:07.639 of years rather than enslaving them and all their descendants 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:13.040 for life. Benjamin started criticizing slavery and slave owners right away. 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:17.960 He also met other abolitionists, including fellow Quaker Ralph Sandeford, 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:20.199 who by that point was in very poor physical and 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:24.240 mental health, in part due to being harassed by other 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:27.919 Quakers over his abolitionist beliefs, which had gone on for years. 0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:31.440 Sanderford died in seventeen thirty three, so when Ley met 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:33.680 him it was toward the end of his life. After 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:36.800 a couple of years of this, Benjamin and Sarah decided 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:40.080 to move to Abington, about fifteen miles north of Philadelphia, 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:43.520 and they may have chosen this location because Susannah Morris 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:45.919 lived there. She and Sarah were friends and they had 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:50.639 traveled together as ministers, including surviving as shipwreck together. But 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:53.760 when the Lays tried to get their certificate from Philadelphia 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:56.679 so they could join a meeting in Abington, Robert Jordan 0:17:56.760 --> 0:17:59.960 Junior objected, arguing that because of all of the content, 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:03.720 like back in England, Benjamin's membership in Philadelphia was not 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:07.040 authorized in the first place. Not long after they moved 0:18:07.080 --> 0:18:09.879 to Abington, Sarah Lay died at the age of about 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:13.320 fifty eight. Her cause of death is unknown, it does 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:17.240 seem to have been unexpected and pretty sudden. Benjamin also 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:20.080 seems to have thought that Jordan's treatment of the two 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:22.960 of them contributed to it, maybe by causing them both 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:26.320 a lot of stress. A notice from the Abington Monthly 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:30.440 Meeting mentioned Sarah's quote gift of ministry and her travels 0:18:30.440 --> 0:18:33.080 through England, Scotland and Ireland and some parts of the 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:37.120 continent as a minister. It's very likely that Sarah had 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:40.880 been a tempering influence in Benjamin's life, not just smoothing 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:43.199 things over with the various Quaker meetings that they were 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:47.000 part of, but also in reigning in his more radical impulses. 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:51.600 And without her, he dedicated himself to aggressively speaking out 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:54.440 against slavery. And we're going to get to that after 0:18:54.480 --> 0:19:06.119 we have another sponsor break. Some of the chronology of 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:08.880 Benjamin Lay's life is a little bit fuzzy, so it's 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:10.880 possible that some of the things we're about to talk 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:15.120 about happened before his wife died. Even if that's the case, though, 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:20.919 after Sarah's death Benjamin became known as an increasingly eccentric figure. 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:25.880 He was heavily influenced by the Cenic philosophers, particularly Diogenes. 0:19:26.320 --> 0:19:28.440 If you need a refresher on that, we just re 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:31.040 ran our episode on him as a Saturday classic. But 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:34.280 in general, the Cynics were in favor of living with nature, 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:39.399 abandoning social conventions, and living in an acetic, minimal existence. 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:42.919 Lay started living in a cave in Abington, which was 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:46.800 spacious enough that he had an extensive library there. It 0:19:46.840 --> 0:19:48.919 was also big enough for a spinning wheel, which he 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:51.920 used to spin flax. He made all of his own 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:54.679 clothes from undyed toe linen because he didn't want to 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:58.600 wear any material that harmed animals or was connected to slavery. 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:02.160 He would use other from animals that had died naturally, 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:04.200 but he would not use it from ones that had 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:08.080 been slaughtered or hunted. Ley had also become a strict vegetarian, 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:10.560 although he did drink milk and he ate honey that 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:13.480 was made by bees that he raised himself, taking care 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:15.520 not to harm any of them when he harvested it. 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:18.480 He didn't drink tea because of the abuses in the 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:21.399 tea industry in Asia, and he didn't eat sugar because 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:25.399 it was grown, harvested, and processed by enslaved Africans. He 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:28.439 also went everywhere on foot because he didn't want to 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:33.040 exploit the labor of horses. He started publicly condemning slave owners, 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:38.000 especially Quaker slave owners, including during meetings, and he became 0:20:38.080 --> 0:20:42.520 increasingly dramatic in his protests. After interrupting someone in a meeting, 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:45.439 he was forcibly carried out into the rain, and he 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:47.960 lay in the MUDs so that the whole congregation had 0:20:47.960 --> 0:20:51.400 to step over him as they left. On another occasion, 0:20:51.440 --> 0:20:54.240 he stood outside the meetinghouse in the snow with one 0:20:54.240 --> 0:20:56.440 boot off and the leg of his pants rolled up. 0:20:56.920 --> 0:20:58.920 When people asked what he was doing, or said that 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:02.240 he should go inside because he might get sick, he answered, quote, 0:21:02.480 --> 0:21:05.960 you pretend compassion for me, but you do not feel 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:08.400 for the poor slaves in the field who go all 0:21:08.440 --> 0:21:12.240 winter half clad. To protest the use of slave labor 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:16.480 in the tobacco industry and tobacco's unwholesome effects on health, 0:21:17.119 --> 0:21:20.240 Lay took three pipes to an annual Quaker meeting, and 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:23.920 he smashed each of them, one among the ministers, one 0:21:23.960 --> 0:21:26.880 among the women, and one among the men, a lot 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:30.520 of Quaker congregations at that point, separated by gender. He 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:34.159 did a similar demonstration against the tea industry, protesting the 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:37.639 conditions in the tea and sugar industries and the luxury 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:41.920 that was associated with tea, by smashing his late wife's 0:21:41.960 --> 0:21:45.080 tea set with a hammer in a public square. Ley 0:21:45.160 --> 0:21:47.800 also tried to convince some neighbors to free a young 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:51.000 girl that they were enslaving as a household servant. He 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:53.640 had also made friends with their child. In some accounts 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:56.560 this was a son, and others it's a daughter. One 0:21:56.640 --> 0:21:59.040 day he convinced this child to come stay with him 0:21:59.040 --> 0:22:02.280 for the afternoon, and when he saw the parents that evening, 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:05.840 distraught over their missing child, he said, quote, your child 0:22:05.880 --> 0:22:08.640 is safe in my house, and now you may conceive 0:22:08.760 --> 0:22:11.520 of the sorrow you inflict upon the parents of the 0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:14.720 Negro girl you hold in slavery, for she was torn 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:18.040 from them by avarice. At one point, Lay traveled to 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:21.879 Philadelphia to visit another Quaker family. He arrived as they 0:22:21.920 --> 0:22:24.679 were having breakfast, and he asked them whether the person 0:22:24.720 --> 0:22:28.320 who was serving their meal was enslaved. When they answered 0:22:28.359 --> 0:22:30.960 that yes, he was, Ley said quote, then I will 0:22:31.000 --> 0:22:34.120 not share with THEE in the fruits of thy unrighteousness. 0:22:34.160 --> 0:22:36.640 And he left. There's so many points in his story 0:22:36.640 --> 0:22:41.760 where I want to yell right on, yea, Benjamin Lay 0:22:41.800 --> 0:22:45.199 is putting the rest of us to shame completely. Ley's 0:22:45.240 --> 0:22:49.280 most famous anti slavery demonstration took place at the Philadelphia 0:22:49.359 --> 0:22:52.960 Yearly Meeting on September nineteenth, seventeen thirty eight. This was 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:56.480 an annual meeting of all the Philadelphia area Quaker meetings 0:22:56.520 --> 0:23:00.320 held in Burlington, New Jersey. Lay walked about twenty minsles 0:23:00.359 --> 0:23:03.159 to get there, wearing a military uniform with a sword 0:23:03.200 --> 0:23:06.920 belted to his hip under an overcoat. He also carried 0:23:06.960 --> 0:23:09.800 a hollowed out book in which was concealed a bladder 0:23:09.840 --> 0:23:13.480 filled with bright red pokeberry juice. During this meeting, he 0:23:13.560 --> 0:23:17.200 stood up and said, quote, Oh, all you Negro masters 0:23:17.240 --> 0:23:20.320 who are contentedly holding your fellow creatures in a state 0:23:20.359 --> 0:23:24.480 of slavery during life, well knowing the cruel sufferings those 0:23:24.520 --> 0:23:28.000 innocent captives undergo in their state of bondage, both in 0:23:28.040 --> 0:23:31.200 these North American colonies and in the West India Islands, 0:23:31.520 --> 0:23:34.480 you must know they are not made slaves by any 0:23:34.560 --> 0:23:37.800 direct law but are held by an arbitrary and self 0:23:37.800 --> 0:23:42.280 interested custom in which you participate, and especially you, who 0:23:42.320 --> 0:23:45.439