The Story of the Incorrigible Quakers and Their Hats

“The first occasion on which the Quaker’s hat came publicly and officially into trouble was at the Launceston Assizes* in the year 1656, before no less a person than Chief Justice Glynn. 

‘When we were brought into the court,’ says Fox, ‘we stood a pretty while with our hats on, and all was quiet, and I was moved to say, “Peace be amongst you!” “Why do you not put your hats off?” said the judge to us. We said nothing. “Put off your hats,” said the judge again. Still we said nothing. Then said the judge, “The court commands you to put off your hats.”‘ 

George Fox, with amazing simplicity, asked for some Scriptural instances of any magistrate commanding prisoners to put off their hats. He next asked to be shown, ‘either printed or written, any law of England that did command such a thing.’ 

Then the judge grew very angry, and said, ‘I do not carry my law books on my back.’ 

‘But,’ said Fox, ‘tell me where it is printed in any statute-book, that I may read it.’ 

The chief justice cried out ‘Prevaricator!’ and ordered the Quakers to be taken away. 

When they were brought before him again, the chief justice asked Fox whether hats were mentioned at all in the Bible? 

‘Yes,’ said the Quaker, ‘in the third of Daniel, where thou mayst read that the children were cast into the fiery furnace by Nebuchadnezzar’s command with their coats, their hose, and their hats on!’ 

Here was a proof that even a heathen king allowed men to wear hats in his presence. ‘This plain instance stopped him,’ says Fox. ‘So he cried again, “Take them away, gaoler;” accordingly we were taken away, and thrust in among the thieves, where we were kept a great while.’ 

After nine weeks’ imprisonment ‘for nothing but about their hats,’ as the chief justice told them, they were again brought before him, grimly wearing the offending head-gear. 

‘Take off their hats,’ said the judge to the gaoler. 

‘Which he did,’ says Fox, ‘and gave them unto us; and we put them on again. Then the judge began to make a great speech, how he represented the lord protector’s person, and that he had made him lord chief justice of England.’ 

The Quakers were incorrigible. They were sent back to prison, but not really so much for the wearing of their hats as for the suspicion that they were royalist emissaries affecting religious singularity in order to win their way amongst the extreme Puritans. Indeed a Major Seely actually gave evidence — false enough — that he had heard George Fox boast that he “could raise forty thousand men at an hour’s warning, involve the nation in blood, and so bring in King Charles.”

— Littell’s Living Age, 1876 (source)

*Judicial inquest at Launceston Castle and Gaol in Cornwall, England