George Fox and His Family I

Abstract

In a strongly worded paragraph in his Introduction to Braithwaite's The Beginnings Quakerism (1912) Rufus Jones remarks: Persons who had occupied only the most humble stations in life, unschooled in books and unpractised in affairs, became the exponents a new message and conception life, the powerful and convincing preachers a fresh word truth, the champions new moral and social ideals, and the organisers a unique Christian society.1 We have already seen that this rather disparaging assessment the social status an early Friend is not really true Fox, and though it did apply to many his followers, in general it hardly describes those whose skills in speaking and writing and administration gave a solid strength to the new Society. It overlooks the fact that in a preindustrial world there was much less the filtering process by which people ability find their way through abundant education into middle-class professions. In those days people's basic occupations gave much less a clue to their native abilities or to the extent to which they had educated themselves. The characteristic the potential Quaker was not the outward social standing or the absence it but a certain measure self-awareness, an unease in the material commonplace and a desire for spiritual understanding. These qualities can be found anywhere. Poverty may stunt them, but wealth can just as easily stifle them. A substantial number early Friends did come from the embryonic professional and business class and had the advantage as much education as the age had to offer, at least outside a university. This is conspicuously true the Fell family group in which Fox moved freely and intimately. Margaret Fell junior married a wealthy merchant and planter of Barbadoes and Kingston on Thames; Isobel married a Bristol merchant, William Yeamans; Sarah, after having for years shown her business skills in the management her mother's estate at Swarthmoor, married William Meade, a master