The "I Can Now Die In Peace" Story

It was an ordinary day.  And, before you misread my story title, I'm personally not quite ready yet to follow along with what it says.  My story has to do with a man of small stature; 4 feet, 7 inches tall with a protruding chest and a hunched back and arms about the same size as his legs to be exact.  While reading about Benjamin Franklin's printing shop in Lancaster, I came upon a side story about a fellow named Benjamin Lay who was born in 1681 to Quaker parents.  After a very basic education he began work as an apprentice to a glove maker.  A few years later he worked with his brother doing farm work and then, at the age of 20, went to sea.  Due to his size he returned home before long, married and moved to London.  He was a man who drank only milk and water, was a strict vegetarian and would eat nor wear nothing that was made as a result of the loss of animal life or in which any amount of slave labor was used for its provision.  He grew his own food and made his own clothes while living in a cottage in the Pennsylvania countryside.

Mr. Benjamin Lay.  It was said that he lived in this cave.

 As to what might have happened to his wife I have no knowledge.  He was totally against slavery, the prison system and capital punishment.  Most times his views differed quite a bit from the Quaker philosophy.  He made several dramatic public demonstrations against slavery.  In 1720 he was disowned by the Quakers due to a speech he gave at a Quaker meeting.  He moved to another district where he did much the same thing and was once again disowned.  In 1731 he went to the island of Barbados where we was appalled after seeing the conditions that the slaves had to endure.  He took up their cause by berating the Quaker slaveholders which led to his returning once again to Philadelphia where he became a friend of Benjamin Franklin.  

Drawing of Benjamin Lay and his friend Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin published a story written by Mr. Lay that told of the evils of slavery which was directed against the Quakers.  The Quakers were angered by the story and also that Franklin would print it without their approval.   In 1738, during the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Quakers, he dressed as a soldier and concluded a diatribe against slavery by plunging a sword into a Bible that contained a hidden bladder filled with pokeberry juice which spit its blood-red contents over nearby members.   Once again he was disowned.  Throughout his life Lay considered himself to be a Quaker, but still protested against the Quaker views on slavery.  At one point he kidnapped a child and only returned the child when the police arrived.  He did it to show how African parents felt when their children were captured and sold into slavery.  Eventually the Society of Friends (Quakers) renounced slavery due to Benjamin Lay's views on the practice.  During the 1758 Yearly Meeting of the Quakers in Philadelphia it was decided that slave holders would be excluded from any business meetings.  When Mr. Lay heard the news he said, "I can how die in peace."  He died the following year and was buried in the Quaker burial ground in Abington, near Philadelphia.  For almost all of his life he was a slavery abolitionist as well as a philanthropist.  What this man lacked in stature he made up for in moral courage and radical thinking.  And, if I hadn't been reading about Benjamin Franklin I doubt if I would have ever heard of him.  And now, after reading my story, you too can say the same thing.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.