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Thomas Camm |
Kendal: Cumbria Record Office MS WDFC/FI/12: Minute book of Kendal Monthly and Quarterly Meetings
© Reproduced by kind permission of the Society of Friends, Kendal and Sedbergh Meeting
Thomas Camm (1640/1–1708) was the son of John and Mabel Camm of Camsgill, Preston Patrick. Brought up ‘in the Nurture and Fear of the Lord’ by his father, he was already 'religiously inclined' when George Fox came to Preston Patrick in June 1652:
A nottable day Jndeede never to be forgotten by me, Thomas Camm ... J being then present at that meeting, A schoole boy but aboute 12 years of age, yet, J bless the Lord for his mercy, then religiously inclined, do still remember that blessed & gloryouse day, in which my soull, by that liveing Testemony then borne in the demonstration of Gods power, was effectually opened, reached, & Convinced, wth many more, who are sealls of that powrfull Ministery that Attended this ffaithfull servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, & by which we were Convinced, & turned from darknesse to light & from Satans powr to the power of God. 1
As a child he was much attached to John Audland, who was ten years older than he was, ‘and loved him with a Brotherly Love, before we were brought into the blessed Way and Life of Truth, as now revealed, after which we became more inwardly acquainted, and endearedly bound up together in a more Heavenly and Spiritual relation’.2 His father John and Audland worked as a team, until John Camm became too ill to continue, after which Thomas seems to have taken over as travelling companion, and ‘ I never thought Travel hard or tedious at any time, so that I might enjoy his Company, in which I was always delighted greatly satisfied, whatever difficulty soever I under-went to obtain the same’.3 In January 1663/4 Audland died at the age of 34, followed by John Camm in 1665. Thomas Camm greatly admired Audland's widow Ann, who had been left with two small children, the second born ten days after her husband’s death, and in 1666 ‘the Lord by his Providence ... Blessed me with the enjoyment of her being given me to Wife’.4 She was fourteen years older than her second husband, but they seem to have lived together devotedly until she died in 1705 at the age of 78. He followed her three years later. They had two daughters of their own, Mary and Sarah. In 1682 Sarah died of complications after smallpox before her ninth birthday. Her parents published an account of her death in The Admirable and Glorious Appearance of the Eternal God in and through a Child, which gives a vivid picture of a preternaturally adult little girl in a 17th-century Quaker family: see excerpts in ‘Some Sources’.
Besides his travels in the ministry, Thomas Camm was fined many times, and imprisoned on at least three occasions. While he was in jail at Appleby for six years in the 1670/80s, he edited with Charles Marshall, a Bristol Friend who remembered the glory days of their ministry, a tribute to his two heroes, his father and his friend, The memory of the righteous revived being a brief collection of the books and written epistles of John Camm & John Audland, those two faithful and honourable servants of the Lord, who were called to the work of the ministry in the morning of Gods blessed day dawned in this generation, and, with other brethren, bore the heat and burden of the day faithfully, to the end and finishing of their course, being entered into the joy of their Lord .... He says that for some years,
this concern hath lived with me, though hitherto hath been obstructed, partly in hope that some other might have undertaken the same work, whereby
I might have been excused; and partly through the Service and Travels the Lord hath measureably concerned me in, on the behalf of his Truth and People in late years.
But now being it hath fallen to my lot in Truths Testimony, to be called to suffer Imprisonment, and thereby at present freed from some of the
aforesaid Service and Travels; and the said concern hitherto resting upon my Spirit, I was made willing to set to the Work, being partly helped by others, as to
gather and transcribe their Books and written Epistles, so many whereof as we could meet with are inserted hereafter in their proper places, so near, as we could,
being several of them without dates ...5
The collection includes a testimony from Ann Audland/Camm about her former husband. Thomas’s personal memoir is dated ‘From Apleby Goal the place of my present confinement for the Testimony of Jesus, This 14th of the 12th Month, 1680’.6 Many of the early Quakers seem to have seen imprisonment as a sabbatical in this way.
He was also involved in controversy. He wrote a detailed rebuttal to John Wilkinson's 1683 The Memory of that Servant of God, John Story, Revived, entitled The line of truth and true judgment stretched over the heads of falshood and deceit ... together with a short account of what the separate meeting in Westmorland (that the said J.S. and J.W. were the principal authors of) is come to ... (1684); possibly the more vehement because he had himself briefly been tempted by their attitudes. Perhaps spurred on my his wife’s conspicuous talent for the ministry, he wrote A testimony to the fulfilling the promise of God relating to such women who through the pouring out of Gods Spirit upon them are become prophetesses, daughters, and handmaidens and their prophecying, teaching, preaching, and praying through the operation of the Spirit of Christ ... by one who hath diligently searched the Scripture, and hath had an high esteem thereof from his youth 1689). A detailed scriptural justification of women's preaching, it invokes the figures of Mary Magdalene and other New Testament followers of Christ. He also got involved in a controversy about three local Quaker women who accused one Henry Winder and his wife of murdering their unborn child, which they said they knew by revelation: Winder launched into furious confutation not only of the accusation but of the Quakerism which he saw as having encouraged it, and Camm came out against him and his imputation that the women were Quakers in An old apostate justly exposed ... (1698).
He died of complications of ‘his Old Distemper of Stone and Gravel’ on 13th day of 1st month, 1707/8, at the house of his son-in-law John Moore at Eldworth in Yorkshire, ‘being Aged 66 Years 9 Months and 10 Days’. His body was taken to Camsgill, and he was carried in procession to the burial ground at Preston Patrick, ‘acompanied thither by several Hundred of People, (both of the Neighbourhood, and also many Friends out of divers of the Adjacent Counties)’.
... as he was a man wonderfully Endued with Heavenly and Divine Wisdom; so he was a Man of great Humility, very much Labouring for Love and Unity amongst Brethren, and where any thing aoppeared, tending to a Breach of it, he always used his utmost Endeavours ot put a stop thereto, approving himself to be a Man of Peace ... He was a Man beloved of God, and by all Good Men who knew him. He was a Nursing-Father to many, encouraging every thing that was Good in the least Child; but very Zealous against every appearance of Evil ... And as he was a man well qualified for Discipline; so he laboured very much to promote it, for the Encouragement of them that were weak; and to bring to Judgment those that were loose ... he was very zealous against that Antichristian Yoke of Tythes, and though he suffer’d very much on that Account; yet he stod Faithful to the last, and rejoyced in his Sufferings upon that, and all other Accounts for Truths sake.7.
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Further Reading
The memory of the righteous revived being a brief collection of the books and written epistles of John Camm & John Audland, those two faithful and honourable servants of the Lord,
who were called to the work of the ministry in the morning of Gods blessed day dawned in this generation, and, with other brethren, bore the heat and burden of the day
faithfully, to the end and finishing of their course, being entered into the joy of their Lord ... edited Thomas Camm and Charles Marshall (London: Andrew Sowle, 1689)
Piety Promoted
Thomas and Ann Camm The Admirable and Glorious Appearance of the Eternal God in and through a Child (London: John Bringhurst, 1684)
Thomas Camm A testimony to the fulfilling the promise of God relating to such women who through the pouring out of Gods Spirit upon them are become prophetesses, daughters, and handmaidens and their prophecying,
teaching, preaching, and praying through the operation of the Spirit of Christ ... by one who hath diligently searched the Scripture, and hath had an high esteem
thereof from his youth (London: Andrew Sowle, 1689)
Thomas Camm The line of truth and true judgment stretched over the heads of falshood and deceit in a short, yet serious examination of a printed book entituled
(The memory of that servant of God John Story, revived) : subscribed in parts by serveral persons therein named : wherein their hypocricy & deceit i[n] applauding
him is manifested and detected, and their groundless clamour and calumnies agai[n]st order and discipline amongst God's people rebuked : together with a short
account of what the separate meeting in Westmorland (that the said J.S. and J.W. were the principal authors of) is come to / by Thomas Camme (London: John Bringhurst,
1684)
‘The First Publishers of Truth’: being early records, now first printed, of the introduction of
Quakerism into the counties of England and Wales edited Norman Penney (Friends Historical Society
Journal Supplements 1-5; London: Headley; New York: Taber, 1907)
Joseph Besse A Collection of the sufferings of the people called Quakers, 2 vols (London: Luke Hinde, 1753)
William C. Braithwaite The Beginnings of Quakerism edited H. J. Cadbury (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2nd edition 1955)
1. First Publishers of Truth page 245: see ‘Other Sources’ on index page. Return
2. The memory of the righteous revived sig. C1v. Return
3. The memory of the righteous revived sig. C3r. Return
4. The memory of the righteous revived sig. B6r. Return
5. The memory of the righteous revived sig. A2v-3r. Return