Quakers
in the World

George Fox (1624 - 91), began the Quaker movement soon after the turbulence of the English Civil War. He came to believe that everyone could encounter God directly, so priests were not needed. He spread these ideas with much success, at home and abroad, despite several imprisonments.

Robert Were Fox the Younger (1789 – 1877) was a Quaker geologist and mine owner from Cornwall in the UK. He was the first person to demonstrate that the Earth’s temperature increased with depth. He also developed a special form of compass accurate at all latitudes, used by Sir James Clark Ross in his expedition to discover the South Pole. With his daughters, Fox founded the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society.

Margaret Fell or Margaret Fox (c. 1614 - 23 April 1702) a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, is often called the "mother of Quakerism". Her home at Swarthmoor Hall in the Lake District was a key hub for the first Quakers, and she was one of the 'Valiant Sixty' early Quaker preachers and missionaries.

Many early Quakers were imprisoned, and often had their property confiscated. Three of them made particular contributions to Quaker thought and action concerning criminal justice, George Fox (the founder of Quakerism), Margaret Fell, and William Penn. The fourth, John Bellers, was an early thinker about social and penal reform.

Elizabeth Hooton (1600-1672) may well have been the first person to be ‘convinced of the truth’ by George Fox. Certainly she was the first of the great Quaker woman missionaries, and one of the group known as the Valiant Sixty. She travelled several times to the New World and endured persecution well into her old age.

William Edmondson (1627-1712) grew up in Westmorland. He was in the Parliamentary army during the Civil War, but became a Quaker in 1653. He spent most of the rest of his life, in Ireland, and was key to establishing Quakerism there. He undertook several fruitful missionary journeys to the American colonies, often alongside George Fox.