Life of Thomas Wilson
Thomas Wilson was a Cumberland man who could not sing the psalms with a clear conscience. He walked eight miles on a Sunday afternoon to hear a second sermon and came home no easier. Then, in an evening meeting of the people called Quakers, a Friend spoke of waiting inwardly on the Lord for power over every unclean thought, and Wilson struck his breast and said in his heart, "This is what I have so greatly wanted." He shook so hard that the table he leaned on trembled. He was a minister for the next forty-five years. From 1682 he crossed again and again to Ireland, most often with James Dickinson, the young Cumberland Friend who became his companion for life. In 1691 the two sailed for America in a merchant fleet that the French attacked soon after it left Falmouth, and for two years they worked Virginia, Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New England, Barbados, Antigua and Nevis. He married Mary Bewley of Woodhall in 1695, settled near Edenderry in the King's County — a place he believed he had been shown in a vision years before — and crossed the Atlantic a second time in 1713, at nearly sixty. This edition gathers his journal and his epistles with the testimonies of Friends concerning him, in clear modern English, with nothing of his voice sanded away.
- Fully modernized English — every long sentence broken, every inversion untangled
- Editorial introduction placing his convincement, his travels, and his world in context
- 14 chapters with date ranges, plus a full linked table of contents
- His journal and epistles, with the testimonies of Friends who knew him
- EPUB format
This edition
Read itE-book · EPUB
- Time to read2 hours
- Length28,902 words
- Files1 EPUB, DRM-free
How we get 2 hours
This figure is here so you can compare one book against another. Every title on the site is timed from its own word count at the same reading speed — nothing is adjusted book by book — so if this edition says 2 hours and another says half that, the second one really is about half the reading. It is a measure of size, in the way a page count is. Your own pace is your own: at the speeds typical adult readers actually manage, this edition runs anywhere from 1.6 hours to 2.8 hours.
What is in this edition
| Modernized text | 27,303 words |
|---|---|
| Introduction, chapter summaries and notes written for this edition | 1,599 words |
| Total | 28,902 words |
The introduction, the chapter summaries and the notes on people, places and unfamiliar terms were written for this edition. They are 1,599 of the 28,902 words above, and they are part of what you are buying.
Counted from the text of the EPUB you receive. Navigation, the title page, the table of contents and the licence page are excluded — they are packaging, not reading.
The reading rate
238 words per minute, for adult silent reading of non-fiction, applied unchanged to every title on the site. We did not pick the number; it is the pooled result of a published meta-analysis. Nothing is adjusted book by book — that consistency is what makes two of these figures worth comparing.
Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047
190 studies, 18,573 participants.
The same paper puts most adult readers between 175 and
300 words per minute, and those two speeds give the
1.6 hours and 2.8 hours above.
Because time is words divided by speed, an even range of speeds produces an
uneven range of times, so 2 hours sits nearer the fast end of that
range than the middle of it.
If it were a paperback
Roughly 83–116 pages.
Words per printed page is a typesetting convention, not a measurement — it moves with trim size, type size and leading. The range above assumes 250–350 words a page. Friends Illuminated publishes no print edition of this book; the figure is here only because pages are a more familiar size than words.
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About This Edition
He was born at Soulby, in the parish of Dacre in Cumberland, to Edward and Ann Wilson, somewhere around the middle of the 1650s. The book never gives the year. His friends in Ireland reckoned him about seventy-one when he died, and his wife remembered that he married in the fortieth year of his age — so the arithmetic points to 1654 or thereabouts, and no closer.
He was raised in the Church of England, taught the catechism, baptized as an infant. An old neighbour, George Marke, remembered him as a young man “much given to sport and jesting.”
The table that trembled
Then something broke his rest, and he could not argue his way out of it. He walked eight miles on a Sunday afternoon to hear a second sermon. He found he could not sing the psalms honestly. He argued religion with anyone who would listen and found no peace in winning.
The turn came in an evening meeting of Friends, where someone spoke of waiting inwardly on the Lord for power over every unclean thought. Wilson struck his breast. This is what I have so greatly wanted. He shook until the table he was leaning on shook with him, and when he finally spoke in a meeting it was, he says, “in very great fear and much trembling.”
Informers, and then a great calm
The England he began preaching in was a hard place for Friends. Under the Conventicle Acts any religious meeting outside the established church was illegal, and informers took a share of the fines they brought down on worshippers. Wilson met that pressure face to face — officers pulling Friends out of a meeting at Kendal, an informer in Pembrokeshire demanding he come before a justice without a warrant.
Then it eased. After the Toleration Act of 1689 Dissenters who met openly could worship lawfully, and Wilson noticed the change in the size of the rooms: the meetings grew large, “for the strong wind of persecution had ceased, and there was a great calm.”
Two crossings
From 1682 Ireland pulled at him, and he went back and again, usually with James Dickinson. In 1691 the two of them sailed for America in the middle of a war with France, in a merchant fleet the French attacked not long after it cleared Falmouth. They were gone two years — Virginia, Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New England, then Barbados, Antigua and Nevis. In Pennsylvania he walked into the middle of the Keithian controversy and had to say what he thought of George Keith.
He came home in 1693, married Mary Bewley of Woodhall in 1695, and moved to Ireland, settling near Edenderry in the King’s County — a place he was convinced he had already been shown in a vision. He farmed there, raised a family, travelled constantly, and in 1713 went over the Atlantic a second time, at nearly sixty, with Dickinson again.
What is in this volume
The book is not only his own account. It opens with the preface and the testimonies of Friends in Ireland, Cumberland and Virginia, and with his wife’s and children’s memories of him — so you meet the man as those who buried him saw him, before you hear him speak. Then comes his own journal, from Soulby to the last illness. It closes with his epistles: to Virginia and Carolina, to Pennsylvania, to Barbados, to Philadelphia, to America at large, and a late letter to the men’s meeting at Mountmellick that reads like a man setting his house in order.
He died in Ireland on the 20th of the Third month — May — 1725, and was buried two days later, attended by a great number of Friends and others.
