| | by admin | | posted on 22nd May 2023 in The English Revolution | | views 2257 | |
1652 is the year most commonly accepted when the Quakers (The Society Of Friends) came together as an organised movement.
It was in 1647 that a scattered flock of independent Seekers came together, began calling each other 'Friend' and named themselves the Children of the Light.
They were led by the 27 year-old George Fox. Fox was the son of a Leicestershire weaver and, living in times of social upheaval and war, was one of many people who found themselves questioning the chaos of the age. He became a Seeker and formed a small circle of followers.
As a result of these turbulent years many dissenting groups had emerged, largely for religious or political reasons. Fox and the Children of the Light were one such group and travelled mostly around northern England to preach their message.
The message they preached was that clergy from the Church of England were unnecessary for a person to experience God, who was present within everyone. If clergy were unnecessary, then so too was paying tithes, a tax to the Church.
Such rebellion against the religious establishment led to the trial of George Fox for blasphemy in 1650. Fox is said to have told the judge after the guilty verdict that he should “Tremble at the word of the Lord”. In reply, the judge mockingly called Fox and his followers in court “Quakers”.
It is also likely that Friends had been called “Quakers” before this because of ecstatic shaking during worship, but the judge’s taunt ensured the name endured.
In 1652, with the bloody civil war over, Fox and the Children of the Light met with the Westmorland Seekers in Cumbria. Here Fox climbed Pendle Hill and recorded in his journal that “the Lord let me see in what places he had a great people to be gathered”.
A few days later the Westmorland Seekers arranged a gathering of more than 1,000 people from across the region to hear Fox, now labelled a “Quaker”, speak. The place was Firbank Fell in Cumbria, where he is said to have preached for more than three hours. Many Seekers subsequently became Friends.
By 1660 there were an estimated 60,000 Quakers in Britain, representing around 0.75% of the population. By contrast groups such as the Levellers and Diggers had been suppressed until they faded from existence. These 60,000 Friends became known as the first generation because they stood at the birth of Quakerism and passed the faith to later generations.
One reason for this rapid growth was their use of the printing press. In the first three decades of Quakerism, Friends pamphlets accounted for around 9% of all known titles published in England. This was remarkable for a group numbering less than 1% of the population. Many of these pamphlets survive and are held at the Library of the Society of Friends.
Quakerism soon crossed the Atlantic. Mary Fisher and Ann Austin were the first known Friends to reach the New World. They travelled from England to Barbados in 1655 and then on to the Massachusetts Bay Colony to spread Quaker beliefs among settlers.
In Puritan run Massachusetts the two women were persecuted, imprisoned, and had their books burned. Because of Puritan intolerance, Friends eventually left the colony and moved to the more tolerant settlement in Rhode Island. Massachusetts Bay later outlawed Quakerism and went on to hang four Friends in Boston, including Mary Dyer.
Between 1675 and 1725 an estimated 23,000 Quakers left England for America, deliberately avoiding Massachusetts. In 1682 William Penn founded Pennsylvania as his 'holy experiment' and promoted it as democratic and tolerant of all faiths.
The same year 23 ships carrying roughly 2,000 settlers crossed the Atlantic and sailed up the Delaware River to join Penn’s new colony. Alongside Quakers, the settlement became a refuge for minority religious groups from Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, and Britain.
By the end of the 17th century the radical roots of Quakerism had taken hold, survived the English Revolution, flourished in the New World and proved impossible to weed out.
