George Fox
An English weaver’s son who preached that Christ teaches his people directly. The meetings he gathered became the Society of Friends, called Quakers. His Journal records his journeys and imprisonments.
Fox writes that he was born in July 1624 at Drayton-in-the-Clay in Leicestershire, where his father was a weaver, and that he was put to work with a shoemaker who also dealt in wool and sold cattle (Fox, Journal ch. 1). He left home in 1643 (Fox, Journal ch. 1). In 1650 he was imprisoned at Derby as a blasphemer, and there, he says, a justice first called his followers Quakers (Fox, Journal ch. 4).
The close of the Journal, added by its editors, tells how he preached at the Gracechurch Street meeting in London on a Sunday, felt the cold strike to his heart as he came out, and died two days later (Fox, Journal 1852 edition, vol. 2, p. 353). The title page gives the day as the thirteenth of the eleventh month, 1690, which is 13 January 1691 by modern reckoning (Fox, Journal 1852 edition, vol. 2, title page). See George Fox and the Quakers.
In the timeline
- 1652, firm dateGeorge Fox and the Quakers
In 1652 George Fox preaches across the north of England that Christ has come to teach his people himself, without priest, tithe or consecrated building. Margaret Fell’s house at Swarthmoor becomes the meeting place of the people their opponents call Quakers.
Primary sources
The Journal of George Fox
- Fox, Journal ch. 1ccel.org
- Fox, Journal ch. 4ccel.org
- Fox, Journal 1852 edition, vol. 2, p. 353archive.org
- Fox, Journal 1852 edition, vol. 2, title pagearchive.org