The courage of Thomas Thrush
Less than four miles from Kilburn, my brother’s home in north Yorkshire till his death last November, is the village of Sutton-under-Whitestonecliffe. It sits at the foot of the steep escarpment known as Sutton Bank, on the main road between Thirsk and Scarborough. Sutton was the home in the 1820s of a remarkable but little-known man called Thomas Thrush. Exactly two hundred years ago this month, on 14 January 1825, Thrush published a long letter to the king, George IV, resigning his position as Captain in the Royal Navy.
Such resignations were probably not uncommon, but most officers wouldn’t have set down a long explanation, and few would have bothered the monarch. But what was most unusual about Thrush’s letter was the reason he gave for his decision: what he called ‘the unlawfulness of war’.
Thrush was born in Stockton-on-Tees in 1761. His father, a tradesman, died young, and he persuaded his mother to let him go to sea, at first in the merchant navy. In 1787 he joined the Royal Navy and eventually became a first lieutenant to Vice-Admiral Lord Hugh Seymour. Having commanded several ships, he retired, after a serious illness, in 1809. He continued to receive half-pay, effectively a pension, from the Navy.
It was during his retirement that Thrush became influenced by Unitarianism, taught himself Greek in order to read the New Testament in the original, and started to consider seriously what views Christians should take on the legitimacy of making war. His 1825 letter to the King, written, he says, after three years of consideration, is based on the proposition that ‘the duties of this [military] profession are altogether irreconcilable with the plain fundamental principles of our holy religion’.
Thrush begins by making it clear that during his active military service he’d never questioned whether there was any moral question about his part in waging war. But during his retirement or ‘seclusion’ he’d come to a different conclusion:
… after more closely examining the Christian precepts, and reviewing my past life, it appears to me that while I have been serving my king and my country, if not brilliantly, then faithfully, I have been acting in open disobedience to the plain and positive commands of another and superior Master, – a Master whose claims upon my allegiance are prior, and paramount, to those of Your Majesty, or of any earthly sovereign.
Thrush finds the basis for this belief in scripture: ‘there is scarcely a chapter in the New Testament that does not virtually condemn war.’ War ‘aggravates every evil, moral or political, by which mankind is assailed.’ The prophets of the Old Testament, he maintains, looked forward to a time, after the coming of Christ, when war would cease, when ‘the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.’ If wars continue, it is not the fault of Christianity, but ‘those who are called Christians’.
Thrush tries to deal with objections to his views. If the Old Testament had encouraged the Jews to take up arms, that was no excuse for Christians to do so. Some argued, wrongly, that while individuals were urged by Christ not to fight, the same injunction did not apply to states. Others maintained that while aggressive wars were unjustified, one could defend wars of defence. But the spirit, if not the letter, of the gospels clearly forbids both. Others again say that preparing for war is the best way of avoiding it. But all that happens then, says Thrush, is that other nations similarly prepare for war, with the result that war indeed breaks out.
Thrush looks forward to more enlightened times: ‘I trust, Sire, that the state of gross darkness which for so many centuries has been producing war and destruction is fast passing away, and light approaching with a steady step’. He ends his letter by assuring the King that he’s reached his conclusion and his decision alone. He’s not been influenced by others, or by ‘the publications of the Peace Societies in this and other countries’, even though he finds them persuasive.
Whether George IV read Thrush’s letter, or, if so, what he made of it, we don’t know. But Thrush remained true to his pacifist views. Later in 1825 he published another pamphlet, Observations on the causes and evils of war; its unlawfulness, and the means and certainty of its extinction, with additions in 1826 and 1827, and in 1833 there followed The apology of an officer, for withdrawing from the profession of arms. In this he wrote, ‘A large proportion of mankind … think wars are almost as unavoidable as earthquakes.’
In 1841, concerned that his original letter had failed to attract much public attention, he republished it, with a set of new ‘letters’, this time addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in a book entitled The last thoughts of a naval officer on the unlawfulness of war, etc. In the new book he thanked his creator for giving him the courage to write to the King: ‘I use the word courage, because I believe it took more courage to write that letter than to fight a battle.’
In 1826, on giving up his Navy pension, he’d been forced to sell his estate at Sutton, and he and his wife moved to a house called Belle Vue that he’d had built in Harrogate. His moral stand cost him more than loss of income, as his biographer, Charles Wellbeloved, wrote in 1845:
Not one of those with who he had shared the labours and perils of the naval service sympathized with him on this occasion. Not one word of approbation and encouragement did he receive from those who had been his warmest and most zealous friends during his professional life: they all forsook him, and all without exception fled from him as a senseless visionary, and a dangerous schismatic.
Another who knew him, Ezra Stiles Gannett of Boston, Mass., added,
When I saw him, he was approaching four-score, a cripple [ from rheumatism], living in retirement at Harrogate for the benefit of the waters during that part of the year when his narrow means allowed him to enjoy this advantage, at a distance from every relative or intimate acquaintance excepting his wife, also an invalid, and without a single being in the place who sympathized with him in his religious belief. Yet a more tranquil or cheerful old age I never witnessed.
Last thoughts was indeed Thrush’s final publication, and he died at home in 1843, aged 83. It isn’t hard to imagine that to the end he remained frustrated that his brave stand against war had failed to spark the debate he expected. True, it did provoke a direct response, a pamphlet by William Anderson, ‘Master Painter of Her Majesty’s Dockyard, Portsmouth’. Anderson rejected all Thrush’s arguments against war, adding that in his view the government ‘ought to keep a very strict eye upon those peace societies you speak of, that are now in the country, and narrowly watch their progress and increase.’ Anderson signed off his letter, pugnaciously, ‘Yours to serve, either by spiritual instruction, or by spiritual combat’. Even the group Thrush might have expected to support his cause and amplify it, the Peace Society, failed to support him actively, fearing, perhaps, that his position was too absolute.