George Fox

Early years

Childhood and youth

Fox was born in July 1624 in the village of Drayton-in-the-Clay, now known as Fenny Drayton, in Leicestershire. There is no exact record of either his birthday or the date of his baptism. He was the eldest of at least six named children (the exact number is unknown) of Christopher Fox and his wife, Mary, née Lago. The names of his other siblings, extracted from scattered references in Fox's writings, were Dorothy, John (later of Polesworth), and Katherine. A further two Fox children appear on Drayton's parish baptismal record, named Mary and Sarah, probably the couple's youngest children.

Christopher Fox was a successful weaver, known to his neighbours as "Righteous Christer", probably out of scorn for his scrupulous Puritan morality. He was nevertheless respected sufficiently to be made churchwarden of Drayton by 1638, when Fox was 14 years old. Modern biographers have suggested that Fox's relationship with his father was fraught, noting his failure to record his death, that many of his references to him cast him as an enemy figure, and that he attributes to him only "a seed of God", rather than full maturity in holiness.

Fox's mother, Mary Lago, was a daughter of one of several Lago yeomen from the Drayton area, perhaps related to minor local gentry, and married beneath the social class in which she had been brought up. William Penn wrote that she was "a woman accomplished above most of her degree in the place where she lived." Fox himself described her as "an upright woman... of the stock of the martyrs," likely a reference to a family connection to either Robert Glover, burned in Coventry in 1555, or Joyce Lewis, burned in Lichfield in 1557. These forebears were executed during the Marian Persecutions for their Protestant faith. Fox's relationship with his mother was apparently far closer and he recorded an experience of deep grief on hearing of her death in 1673: "I did in verity love her as ever one could a mother; for she was a good, honest, virtuous, and a right natured woman." William Penn noted that "she was tender and indulgent over him, so that from her he met little difficulty."

William Penn would later describe Fox's parents as "honest and sufficient" people, reflecting the fact that the Fox family were unusually prosperous for their circumstances, relatively wealthy members of the emerging English middle class. They were able to provide their eldest son funds during his early religious journeys, and conceded to Nathaniel Stephens, the parish priest, that they had sent the young man away with "a great deal of gold and silver." The family's wealth is especially apparent from an incident while Fox was incarcerated in Derby Gaol in 1650, when his parents pledged £100 as bail, with additional bribes of £50. When Christopher died in the late 1650s, he left Fox a significant inheritance, which would help to support his itinerant ministry for the remainder of his life, as well as some smaller bequests to his younger siblings. Fox himself held assets in cash, loans and investments of around £700 a few years before his death, a substantial degree of personal wealth, much of it probably the residue of his inheritance.

Spiritual crisis and first journey

In September 1643 Fox "left my relations, and broke off all familiarity or fellowship with young or old", setting out on a journey down Watling Street that ended in London, as his crisis progressed. The exact nature of his difficulties is unclear, described in the Journal by terms such as "sorrow," "exercises," "great darkness," "trouble of mind," "tempted to sin" and "tempted to despair" (that is, give up hope of salvation). Subsequent biographers have characterised it as depression, a personal symptom of the wider unsettling of traditional certainties brought on by the Civil War, avoidance of conscription to the Roundhead army or an attack on his village, and, given Fox had abandoned his apprenticeship and would come to renounce both the Church of England and his parents' Calvinist theology, a conventional adolescent rebellion. Modern scholars have also speculated that adolescent sexual development played a part in Fox's struggle. As Fox himself stated in an unpublished letter of the 1650s, "I have drunk the cup of fornication". It has been suggested his first journey was the occasion of that confessed loss of virginity. His crisis was also a time of religious experimentation for Fox, coinciding with the widespread religious experimentation afoot in the nation. He sought counsel from many clergy, both Puritans in the established church and members of the new dissenting groups. Their failure to "speak to my condition" initiated his rejection of almost all outward forms of religion, and a determination to know all religious truth only "by experiment."

His journey progressed slowly at first, and he spent time living near to Drayton, in Lutterworth (the former home and burial place of the Lollard leader John Wycliffe) and in Northampton. Later he travelled south from Northampton, staying awhile at Newport Pagnell, before arriving at Barnet in June, 1644. He passed through predominantly parliamentarian regions, however, both Roundhead and Cavalier troops were stationed in the villages and towns along his route. While at Barnet, Fox was torn by depression and perhaps physical urges (Barnet was a rural resort for London and staging post of the Parliamentarian Army, noted for its prostitutes during the Civil War). He alternately shut himself in his room for days at a time or went out alone into the countryside. He was about 20 years old at this time.

Still afflicted by melancholy, Fox left Barnet for the City of London in late summer 1644, securing lodgings and renewing acquaintance with his uncle, William (or Edward) Pickering, a Baptist minister. Fox's first visit to London coincided closely with important developments among both the conformist Puritans and the Independents and radicals – perhaps referred to obliquely by his line in the Journal, "I looked upon the great professors of the city of London". He noted that many in his uncle's nascent Baptist movement were, as he put it, "still tender" (i.e. not hidebound by Calvinist doctrine and still open to personal religious experience). Nevertheless, it was in October 1644, almost certainly while Fox was in the city, that seven London Baptist congregations issued the First London Baptist Confession, a firmly Particular or Calvinist statement of faith. This was a response to the official Westminster Assembly of Puritan divines, meeting just up the River Thames, in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster Abbey, on the orders of the Long Parliament. This group was responsible for drafting the constitutional documents for a never realised state Presbyterian Church of England, the Westminster Confession and the Directory of Public Worship, both of which were published in 1644. Fox's depression continued during his time in London, while his disaffection from both mainstream and the radical Baptists increased.

Religious Society of Friends

In 1647 Fox began to preach publicly: in market-places, fields, appointed meetings of various kinds or even sometimes in "steeple-houses" (churches) after the service. Fox said in his journal ‘and as I was walking by the steeplehouse side, in the town of Mansfield the Lord said unto me, that which people do trample upon must be thy food. And as the Lord spoke he opened it to me how that people and professors did trample upon the life, even the life of Christ was trampled upon…’ Mansfield in Nottinghamshire was a town to which George Fox lived. The steeplehouse in Mansfield was the church of St Peter and St Paul.

His powerful preaching began to attract a small following. It is not clear at what point the Society of Friends was formed, but there was certainly a group of people who often travelled together. At first, they called themselves "Children of the Light" or "Friends of the Truth", and later simply "Friends". Fox seems initially to have had no desire to found a sect, but only to proclaim what he saw as the pure and genuine principles of Christianity in their original simplicity, though he afterward showed great prowess as a religious organiser in the structure he gave to the new society.

There were a great many rival Christian denominations holding very diverse opinions in that period; the atmosphere of dispute and confusion gave Fox an opportunity to put forward his own beliefs through his personal sermons. Fox's preaching was grounded in scripture but was mainly effective because of the intense personal experience he was able to project. He was scathing about immorality, deceit and the exacting of tithes and urged his listeners to lead lives without sin, avoiding the Ranters' antinomian view that a believer becomes automatically sinless. By 1651 he had gathered other talented preachers around him and continued to roam the country despite a harsh reception from some listeners, who would whip and beat them to drive them away. As his reputation spread, his words were not welcomed by all. As an uncompromising preacher, he hurled disputation and contradiction to the faces of his opponents. The worship of Friends in the form of silent waiting punctuated by individuals speaking as the Spirit moved them seems to have been well-established by this time, though it is not recorded how this came to be; Richard Bauman asserts that "speaking was an important feature of the meeting for worship from the earliest days of Quakerism."

Imprisonment

Fox complained to judges about decisions he considered morally wrong, as he did in a letter on the case of a woman due to be executed for theft. He campaigned against paying the tithes intended to fund the established church, which often went into the pockets of absentee landlords or religious colleges distant from the paying parishioners. In his view, as God was everywhere and anyone could preach, the established church was unnecessary and a university qualification irrelevant for a preacher. Conflict with civil authority was inevitable. Fox was imprisoned several times, the first at Nottingham in 1649. At Derby in 1650 he was imprisoned for blasphemy; a judge mocked Fox's exhortation to "tremble at the word of the Lord", calling him and his followers "Quakers". After he refused to fight against the return of the monarchy (or to take up arms for any reason), his sentence was doubled. The refusal to swear oaths or take up arms came to be much more important in his public statements. Refusal to take oaths meant that Quakers could be prosecuted under laws compelling subjects to pledge allegiance and made testifying in court problematic. In a letter of 1652 (That which is set up by the sword), he urged Friends not to use "carnal weapons" but "spiritual weapons", saying, "let the waves [the power of nations] break over your heads".

In 1652, Fox preached for several hours under a walnut tree at Balby, where his disciple Thomas Aldham was instrumental in setting up the first meeting in the Doncaster area. In the same year Fox felt that God led him to ascend Pendle Hill, where he had a vision of many souls coming to Christ. From there he travelled to Sedbergh, where he had heard a group of Seekers was meeting, and preached to over a thousand people on Firbank Fell, convincing many, including Francis Howgill, to accept that Christ might speak to people directly. At the end of the month he stayed at Swarthmoor Hall, near Ulverston, the home of Thomas Fell, vice-chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and his wife, Margaret. Around that time, the ad hoc meetings of Friends began to be formalised and a monthly meeting was set up in County Durham. Margaret became a Quaker, and although Thomas did not convert, his familiarity with the Friends proved influential when Fox was arrested for blasphemy in October. Fell was one of three presiding judges, and the charges were dismissed on a technicality.

Fox remained at Swarthmoor until the summer of 1653, then left for Carlisle, where he was arrested again for blasphemy. It was even proposed to put him to death, but Parliament requested his release rather than have "a young man ... die for religion". Further imprisonments came in London in 1654, Launceston in 1656, Lancaster in 1660, Leicester in 1662, Lancaster again and Scarborough in 1664–1666 and Worcester in 1673–1675. Charges usually included causing a disturbance and travelling without a pass. Quakers fell foul of irregularly enforced laws forbidding unauthorised worship, while actions motivated by belief in social equality – refusing to use or acknowledge titles, take hats off in court or bow to those who considered themselves socially superior – were seen as disrespectful. While imprisoned at Launceston, Fox wrote, "Christ our Lord and master saith 'Swear not at all, but let your communications be yea, yea, and nay, nay, for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.' ... the Apostle James saith, 'My brethren, above all things swear not, neither by heaven, nor by earth, nor by any other oath. Lest ye fall into condemnation.'"

Encounters with Cromwell

Parliamentarians grew suspicious of monarchist plots and fearful that the group travelling with Fox aimed to overthrow the government: by this time his meetings were regularly attracting crowds of over a thousand. In early 1655 he was arrested at Whetstone, Leicestershire and taken to London under armed guard. In March he was brought before the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. After affirming that he had no intention of taking up arms, Fox was able to speak to Cromwell for most of the morning about the Friends. He advised him to listen to God's voice and obey it, so that as Fox left, Cromwell "with tears in his eyes said, 'Come again to my house; for if thou and I were but an hour of a day together, we should be nearer one to the other'; adding that he wished [Fox] no more ill than he did to his own soul."

This episode was later recalled as an example of "speaking truth to power", a preaching technique by which subsequent Quakers hoped to influence the powerful. Although not used until the 20th century, the phrase is related to the ideas of plain speech and simplicity which Fox practised, but motivated by the more worldly goal of eradicating war, injustice and oppression.

Fox petitioned Cromwell over the course of 1656 to alleviate the persecution of Quakers. Later that year, they met for a second time at Whitehall. On a personal level, the meeting went well; despite disagreements between the two men, they had a certain rapport. Fox invited Cromwell to "lay down his crown at the feet of Jesus" – which Cromwell declined to do. Fox met Cromwell again twice in March 1657. Their last meeting was in 1658 at Hampton Court, though they could not speak for long or meet again because of the Protector's worsening illness – Fox even wrote that "he looked like a dead man". Cromwell died in September of that year.

James Nayler

One early Quaker convert, the Yorkshireman James Nayler, arose as a prominent preacher in London around 1655. A breach began to form between Fox's and Nayler's followers. As Fox was held prisoner at Launceston, Nayler moved south-westwards towards Launceston intending to meet Fox and heal any rift. On the way he was arrested himself and held at Exeter. After Fox was released from Launceston gaol in 1656, he preached throughout the West Country. Arriving at Exeter late in September, Fox was reunited with Nayler. Nayler and his followers refused to remove their hats while Fox prayed, which Fox took as both a personal slight and a bad example. When Nayler refused to kiss Fox's hand, Fox told Nayler to kiss his foot instead. Nayler was offended and the two parted acrimoniously. Fox wrote that "there was now a wicked spirit risen amongst Friends".

After Nayler's own release later the same year he rode into Bristol triumphantly playing the part of Jesus Christ in a re-enactment of Palm Sunday. He was arrested and taken to London, where Parliament defeated a motion to execute him by a vote of 96–82. Instead, they ordered that he be pilloried and whipped through both London and Bristol, branded on his forehead with the letter B (for blasphemer), bored through the tongue with a red-hot iron and imprisoned in solitary confinement with hard labour. Nayler was released in 1659, but he was a broken man. On meeting Fox in London, he fell to his knees and begged Fox's forgiveness. Shortly afterward, Nayler was attacked by thieves while travelling home to his family, and died.

Suffering and growth

The persecutions of these years – with about a thousand Friends in prison by 1657 – hardened Fox's opinions of traditional religious and social practices. In his preaching, he often emphasised the Quaker rejection of baptism by water; this was a useful way of highlighting how the focus of Friends on inward transformation differed from what he saw as the superstition of outward ritual. It was also a deliberate provocation of adherents of those practices, so providing opportunities for Fox to argue with them on matters of scripture. The same pattern appeared in his court appearances: when a judge challenged him to remove his hat, Fox replied by asking where in the Bible such an injunction could be found.

The Society of Friends became increasingly organised towards the end of the decade. Large meetings were held, including a three-day event in Bedfordshire, the precursor of the present Britain Yearly Meeting system. Fox commissioned two Friends to travel around the country collecting the testimonies of imprisoned Quakers, as evidence of their persecution; this led to the establishment in 1675 of Meeting for Sufferings, which continued until 2026.

The 1650s, when the Friends were at their most confrontational, was one of the most creative periods of their history. Under the Commonwealth, Fox had hoped that the movement would become the major church in England. Disagreements, persecution and increasing social turmoil, however, led Fox to suffer from severe depression, which left him deeply troubled at Reading, Berkshire, for ten weeks in 1658 or 1659. In 1659, he sent parliament his most politically radical pamphlet, Fifty nine Particulars laid down for the Regulating things, but the year was so chaotic that it never considered these; the document was not reprinted until the 21st century.

The Restoration

With the restoration of the monarchy, Fox's dreams of establishing the Friends as the dominant religion seemed at an end. He was again accused of conspiracy, this time against Charles II, and fanaticism – a charge he resented. He was imprisoned in Lancaster for five months, during which he wrote to the king offering advice on governance: Charles should refrain from war and domestic religious persecution, and discourage oath-taking, plays, and maypole games. These last suggestions reveal Fox's Puritan leanings, which continued to influence Quakers for centuries after his death. Once again, Fox was released after demonstrating that he had no military ambitions.

At least on one point, Charles listened to Fox. The 700 Quakers who had been imprisoned under Richard Cromwell were released, though the government remained uncertain about the group's links with other, more violent, movements. A revolt by the Fifth Monarchists in January 1661 led to the suppression of that sect and the repression of other Nonconformists, including Quakers. In the aftermath of this attempted coup, Fox and eleven other Quakers issued a broadside proclaiming what became known among Friends in the 20th century as the "peace testimony", committing themselves to oppose all outward wars and strife as contrary to the will of God. Not all his followers accepted this commitment; Isaac Penington, for example, dissented for a time, arguing that the state had a duty to protect the innocent from evil, if necessary by using military force. Despite the testimony, persecution against Quakers and other dissenters continued.

Penington and others such as John Perrot and John Pennyman were uneasy at Fox's increasing power within the movement. Like Nayler before them, they saw no reason why men should remove their hats for prayer, arguing that men and women should be treated as equals, and if, as according to the apostle Paul, women should cover their heads, then so could men. Perrot and Penington lost the argument. Perrot emigrated to the New World, and Fox retained leadership of the movement.

Parliament enacted laws which forbade non-Anglican religious meetings of more than five people, essentially making Quaker meetings illegal. Fox counselled his followers to violate openly laws that attempted to suppress the movement, and many Friends, including women and children, were jailed over the next quarter-century. Meanwhile, Quakers in New England had been banished (and some executed), and Charles was advised by his councillors to issue a mandamus condemning this practice and allowing them to return. Fox was able to meet some of the New England Friends when they came to London, stimulating his interest in the colonies. Fox was unable to travel there immediately: he was imprisoned again in 1664 for his refusal to swear the oath of allegiance, and on his release in 1666 was preoccupied with organizational matters – he normalised the system of monthly and quarterly meetings throughout the country, and extended it to Ireland.

Travels in North America and Europe

By 1671 Fox had recovered and Margaret had been released by order of the King. Fox resolved to visit the English settlements in North America and the West Indies, remaining there for two years, possibly to counter any remnants of Perrot's teaching there. After a voyage of seven weeks, during which dolphins were caught and eaten, the party arrived in Barbados on 3 October 1671. From there, Fox sent an epistle to Friends spelling out the role of women's meetings in the Quaker marriage ceremony, a point of controversy when he returned home. One of his proposals suggested that the prospective couple should be interviewed by an all-female meeting prior to the marriage to determine whether there were any financial or other impediments. Though women's meetings had been held in London for the last ten years, this was an innovation in Bristol and the north-west of England, which many there felt went too far.

Fox wrote a letter to the governor and assembly of the island in which he refuted charges that Quakers were stirring up the slaves to revolt and tried to affirm the orthodoxy of Quaker beliefs. After a stay in Jamaica, Fox's first landfall on the North American continent was at Maryland, where he participated in a four-day meeting of local Quakers. He remained there while various of his English companions travelled to the other colonies, because he wished to meet some Native Americans who were interested in Quaker ways—though he relates that they had "a great dispute" among themselves about whether to participate in the meeting. Fox was impressed by their general demeanour, which he saw as "courteous and loving". He resented the suggestion (from a man in North Carolina) that "the Light and Spirit of God ... was not in the Indians", a proposition which Fox rejected. Fox left no record of encountering slaves on the mainland.

Elsewhere in the colonies, Fox helped to establish organizational systems for the Friends, along the same lines as he had done in Britain. He also preached to many non-Quakers, some but not all of whom were converted.

After extensive travels round the various American colonies, George Fox returned to England in June 1673 confident that his movement was firmly established there. Back in England, however, he found his movement sharply divided among provincial Friends (such as William Rogers, John Wilkinson and John Story) who resisted establishment of women's meetings and the power of those who resided in or near London. With William Penn and Robert Barclay as allies of Fox, the challenge to Fox's leadership was eventually put down. But in the midst of the dispute, Fox was imprisoned again for refusing to swear oaths after being captured at Armscote, Worcestershire. His mother died shortly after hearing of his arrest and Fox's health began to suffer. Margaret Fell petitioned the king for his release, which was granted, but Fox felt too weak to take up his travels immediately. Recuperating at Swarthmoor, he began dictating what would be published after his death as his journal and devoted his time to his written output: letters, both public and private, as well as books and essays. Much of his energy was devoted to the topic of oaths, having become convinced of its importance to Quaker ideas. By refusing to swear, he felt that he could bear witness to the value of truth in everyday life, as well as to God, whom he associated with truth and the inner light.

Last years

In the last years of his life, Fox continued to participate in the London Meetings, and still made representations to Parliament about the sufferings of Friends. The new King, James II, pardoned religious dissenters jailed for failure to attend the established church, leading to the release of about 1,500 Friends. Though the Quakers lost influence after the Glorious Revolution, which deposed James II, the Act of Toleration 1689 put an end to the uniformity laws under which Quakers had been persecuted, permitting them to assemble freely.

Two days after preaching as usual at the Gracechurch Street Meeting House in London, George Fox died between 9 and 10 p.m. on 13 January 1690 O.S. (23 January 1691 N.S.). He was interred three days later in the Quaker Burying Ground, in the presence of thousands of mourners.

Works

Book of Miracles

George Fox performed hundreds of healings throughout his preaching ministry, the records of which were collected in a notable but now lost book titled Book of Miracles. This book was listed in the catalogue of George Fox's work maintained by the Library of the Society of Friends at Friends House, London. In 1932, Henry Cadbury found a reference to Book of Miracles in the catalogue, which included the beginning and ending of each account of a miraculous cure. The book was then reconstructed based on this resource and journal accounts. According to Rufus M. Jones, the Book of Miracles "makes it possible for us to follow George Fox as he went about his seventeenth-century world, not only preaching his fresh messages of life and power, but as a remarkable healer of disease with the undoubted reputation of miracle-worker." The Book of Miracles was deliberately suppressed in favour of printing Fox's Journal and other writings.

Journal

Fox's Journal was first published in 1694, after editing by Thomas Ellwood – a friend and associate of John Milton – with a preface by William Penn. Like most similar works of its time the journal was not written contemporaneously to the events it describes, but rather compiled many years later, much of it dictated. Parts of the journal were not in fact by Fox at all, but constructed by its editors from diverse sources and written as if by him. The dissent within the movement and the contributions of others to the development of Quakerism are largely excluded from the narrative. Fox portrays himself as always in the right and always vindicated by God's interventions on his behalf. As a religious autobiography, Rufus Jones compared it to such works as Augustine's Confessions and John Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. It is, though, an intensely personal work with little dramatic power that only succeeds in appealing to readers after substantial editing. Historians have used it as a primary source because of its wealth of detail on ordinary life in the 17th century, and the many towns and villages which Fox visited.

Epistles

Hundreds of Fox's letters – mostly intended for wide circulation, along with a few private communications – were also published. Written from the 1650s onwards, with such titles as Friends, seek the peace of all men or To Friends, to know one another in the light, they give enormous insight into the detail of Fox's beliefs and show his determination to spread them. These writings, in the words of Henry Cadbury, Professor of Divinity at Harvard University and a prominent Quaker, "contain a few fresh phrases of his own, [but] are generally characterized by an excess of scriptural language and today they seem dull and repetitious". Others point out that "Fox's sermons, rich in biblical metaphor and common speech, brought hope in a dark time."

Legacy

Fox had a tremendous influence on the Society of Friends and his beliefs have largely been carried forward. Perhaps his most significant achievement, other than his predominant influence in the early movement, was his leadership in overcoming the twin challenges of government persecution after the Restoration and internal disputes that threatened its stability during the same period. Not all of his beliefs were welcome to all Quakers: his Puritan-like opposition to the arts and rejection of theological study, forestalled development of these practices among Quakers for some time. The George Fox room at Friends House, London, UK is named after him.

Walt Whitman, who was raised by parents inspired by Quaker principles, later wrote: "George Fox stands for something too – a thought – the thought that wakes in silent hours – perhaps the deepest, most eternal thought latent in the human soul. This is the thought of God, merged in the thoughts of moral right and the immortality of identity. Great, great is this thought – aye, greater than all else."

George Fox University, a private Christian university in Newberg, Oregon, United States, is named after him. It was originally founded as a school for Quakers in 1891 and is now the largest private university in Oregon with more than 4,000 students.

Fox is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 13 January.