George Fox

George Fox (1624-1691) is widely regarded as the founder of the Religious Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers. Fox was raised in the Anglican Church but was dissatisfied with his spiritual growth. At the age of 19, he left home to wander the English countryside in search of a greater spiritual understanding. In 1647, Fox reported that he heard God speak to him, an event which radically changed his beliefs about man's relationship with God.

Although other religious dissenters were emerging at the time, Fox is generally credited with starting the Quaker movement. In 1652 after passing over Pendle Hill from which he received a vision that allowed him to "see in what places he had a great people to be gathered", he came across groups of Seekers whom he convinced in such numbers that they provided the effective start to the movement.

Early life

Fox was born in July 1624 in Fenny Drayton in Leicestershire. His father, Christopher Fox, a church warden known as righteous Christer, was a weaver. He himself was apprenticed to a shoemaker. From about the age of 19, as the English Civil War was developing,he began wandering on a personal religious quest, in the course of which he received what he called "openings" of personal revelation, "the Light". Around 1646/47 he began to "declare truth", engaging in preaching. Once the Civil War was over, there was considerable freedom for nonconformist preaching. Nevertheless his activities resulted in imprisonments in Nottingham and Derby, which did nothing to deter him.

Preaching "the Truth"

In 1651 Fox was in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire, where he found people who had had similar experience to his, and convinced others, establishing several Meetings which worshipped in the Quaker manner, there and in West Yorkshire. In 1652 he went up Pendle Hill on the Lancashire border, and later recorded, "I was moved to sound the day of the Lord; and the Lord let me see a-top of the hill in what places he had a great people to be gathered."

He later went into Lancashire where he encountered various groups of Seekers, whom he succeeded in unifying with his own movement. Here, as in Yorkshire, he recruited future Quaker leaders and preachers, and he also met and convinced Margaret Fell, the wife of Assize Judge Thomas Fell. Their house, Swarthmoor (or Swarthmore) Hall, provided a stable centre for later mission work.

At this time James Nayler was seen, at least by non-Quakers, as Fox's equal in the Quaker movement and this balance continued until the events which led to Nayler's disgrace in 1656. Between them, in 1654 they organised a great missionary effort, with many Quaker ministers going out from the north over the whole of England. Fox himself was part of this effort, and his life became a succession of journeys and imprisonments. As numerous Quaker meetings came to be established, he also had to spend more time in work to hold the movement together, sending out many letters and calling occasional "general meetings".