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QUAKERISM DURING THE COMMONWEALTH The Experience of the Light By Frank C. Huntington, Jr.* In 1649, after several years of intense spiritual searching, George Fox discovered through a vision that he was called to a divine mission. "I was to bring people off from all their own ways to Christ, the new and living Way; and from their churches which man had made ... to the church of God."1 Beginning his lifetime pilgrimage in 1651 when he entered York, Fox was greeted by many receptive communities and encountered a religious awakening in the northern counties lasting through the summer of 1653.2 He was soon joined by a number of other itinerant preachers, known collectively to Quaker historians as the First Publishers of Truth. By January 1654 Quakerism's major areas of strength were the counties of York, Westmoreland, Durham, Cumberland, and northern Lancashire, while there were also some scattered meetings in the northern Midlands.3 Of the 250 Friends later recognized as the most active during the 1650s, 160 came from the North.4 Puritanism was relatively weak in the North of England, and Barbour argues that Quaker sentiment was strongest in precisely those areas where Puritanism was weakest. As Friends began to explore the rest of England after 1654, they challenged a more solidly established religion, and generally Quakerism made little headway in the Puritan heartland or in largely Presbyterian Scotland.5 For the whole of England, Braithwaite estimates that in January 1661 the number of adult male Quakers was between 6000 and 8000, while the total number of Friends was nearly *Frank G. Huntington, Jr., formerly a student of Quaker history at Swarthmore College, is now attending the Harvard Law School. 1.Fox, quoted in Caroline Jacob, Builders of the Quaker Road, 16521952 (Chicago, 1953), p. 7. 2.Hugh Barbour and Arthur Roberts, eds. Early Quaker Writings (Grand Rapids, 1973), p. 22. 3.The standard history of Quakerism in this period is William C. Braithwaite , The Beginnings of Quakerism (London, 1912). 4.Hugh Barbour, Quakers in Puritan England (New Haven, 1964), p. 41. 5.Barbour, op. cit., p. 42; see also Donald Durnbaugh, "Baptists and Quakers: Left-wing Puritans?" Quaker History, v. 62 (1973), pp. 67-82. 69 70Quaker History 40,000.6 This growth was not going unnoticed. In a 1656 Parliamentary debate, Major-General Skippon declared that "their great growth and increase is too notorious," while Sir William Strickland warned, "They are a growing evil and the greatest that ever In trying to understand Quakerism in its first decade, two questions seem fundamental: what kind of people were these early Quakers, and what was the nature of their religious experience? Using journals, letters, and meeting records to obtain a broad sense of who was involved, Braithwaite presents the standard social definition for this period. "Friends were drawn principally from the trading and yeoman classes, though there were also some artisans and labourers, a fair number of merchants, and a few gentry."8 This general view that Quakerism was primarily composed of yeoman farmers and traders has prevailed in later histories. Contemporary accounts are of little help in evaluating this interpretation because Quakers seldom spoke specifically about their own social origins, though one London friend described the men who converted him in 1654 as "plain North Country plowmen".9 While Ephraim Pagitt dismissed them contemptuously as "made up out of the dregs of the common people," most of their opponents focused instead on the alleged inadequacy of their religious beliefs.10 Perhaps contemporaries did not think of social occupation itself as a particularly relevant factor, partly because Quakerism in these years lacked a coherent social theory which might have served to rally the lower classes.11 Modern historians, however, are concerned with such social questions, and in recent years several attempts have been made to analyze the social composition of the early Quakers in more detail. Ernest Taylor pioneered this field with his 1922 study of the First Publishers of Truth. Of the more prominent group known as the "First Seventy" or the "Valiant Sixty," Taylor found that 43 of the 61 for whom there was information had been involved 6.Braithwaite, op. cit., p. 512...
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