Gender, the Hat, and Quaker Universalism in the Wake of the English Revolution

Abstract

In 1661, the Quaker John Boyer was beaten, blinded and left to die after refusing to doff his cap to a nobleman.1 Other Quaker men in revolutionary and Restoration England suffered similar reprisals for their insulting denial of 'hat honour' to their supposed superiors. Others yet found themselves gaoled, fined, or whipped for refusing to remove their caps in court.2 In 1652, James Nayler explained to one judge the early rationale for this practice. Charged with blasphemy for claiming that Christ resided within him, and then accused of failing to pay due reverence to the court, Nayler said that he kept his hat upon his head not in contempt but in obedience to authority. He obeyed the authority of God rather than that of man, however, and divine authority recognized no earthly degrees of difference: 'I honour the Power as it is of God, without respect of persons, it being forbidden by Scripture. He that respects men's persons commits sin, and is convinced of the law as a transgressor.'3 The Quaker missionary Edward Burrough echoed these sentiments, asking 'Hath not God made of one mould and one blood all nations to dwell upon the face of the earth? And doth not he that respects persons commit sin?' He challenged his readers: 'Must it now be an offence not to put off the hat or give respect to the person of him that hath a gold ring and fine apparel? Hath not all the earthly lordship, tyranny, and oppression sprung from this ground, by which creatures have been exalted and set up one above another, trampling underfoot and despising the poor?'4John Perrot tried pressing this notion that God was no respecter of persons to its furthest point, one that denied distinctions based on sex as well as social status. A Quaker missionary imprisoned in Rome from 1658 to 1661, Perrot urged in one missive home that 'if any Friend be moved of the Lord God to pray in the congregation of God ... without taking off the hat, or the shoes, let him do so in the fear and name of the Lord'.5 Although Quaker men assiduously retained their hats before all people, they kept the common practice of uncovering during prayer, while women prayed with heads covered. Perrot wrote that this was yet another needless, carnal custom of the sort that Quakers had otherwise repudiated. More to the point, it implied an unwarranted distinction between men and women where none existed. God was no respecter of persons, in this sense or any other. George Fox, then coming to be recognized as the leader of the Quakers, reacted to Perrot's intervention angrily and with alarm. He hounded out Perrot and those who agreed with him, and refined a centralized system of discipline over members of the sect that emerged from the fray.The Quakers' refusal of 'hat honour' to their superiors is well known; once meant to deny distinctions, it became a distinctive badge of the movement and its members. The 'hat controversy' that splintered the early movement and helped solidify a Quaker sect over the 1660s is rather less familiar, however, as are the gender dimensions of both hat testimonies. Generally overlooked or quickly dismissed, this hat controversy has received better, if still brief, mention in a few Quaker studies. Richard Bauman, for example, treats it as a manifestation of the struggle between spontaneity and formalism, between the inner light and outward forms; Larry Ingle depicts it as a contest between individual conscience and group discipline.6 The hat controversy did manifest these tensions; but highlighting its gender dimension suggests that a conflict over the social significance of spiritual equality lay behind it as well. Accordingly, this essay first introduces the broader history and historiography of dress and gesture before turning to the Quakers' use of the hat to repudiate earthly hierarchies of social rank. After a brief excursion to outline the history of headwear in marking sexual subordination, it examines the conflict over Perrot's plea that his fellows fully reject all carnal distinctions. …