Founder of the Society of Friends, or Quakers; born in
Drayton,
Leicestershire, England, in July, 1624.
His father, a Presbyterian, was too poor to give his son an education beyond reading and writing.
The son, who
was grave and contemplative in temperament, was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and made the Scriptures his constant study.
The doctrines he afterwards taught were gradually fashioned in his mind, and believing himself to be called to disseminate them, he abandoned his trade at the age of nineteen, and began his spiritual work, leading a wandering life for some years, living in the woods, and practising rigid self-denial.
He first appeared as a preacher at
Manchester, in 1648, and he was imprisoned as a disturber of the peace.
Then he travelled over
England, meeting the same fate everywhere, but gaining many followers.
He warmly advocated all the
Christian virtues, simplicity in worship, and in manner of living.
Brought before a justice at
Derby, in 1650, he told the magistrate to “quake before the
Lord,” and thereafter he and his sect were called Quakers.
Taken before
Cromwell, in
London, that ruler not only released him, but declared his doctrines were salutary, and he afterwards protected him from persecution; but after the Restoration he and his followers were dreadfully persecuted by the Stuarts.
He married the widow of a Welsh judge in 1669, and in 1672 he came to
America, and preached in
Maryland,
Long Island, and
New Jersey, visiting Friends wherever they were seated.
Fox afterwards visited
Holland and parts of
Germany.
His writings upon the subject of his peculiar doctrine—that the “light of
Christ within is given by God as a gift of salvation” —occupied, when first published, 3 folio volumes.
He died in
London, Jan. 13, 1691.
When the founder of the Society of Friends visited
New England in 1672, being more discreet than others of his sect, he went only to
Rhode Island, avoiding
Connecticut and
Massachusetts.
Roger Williams, who denied the pretensions to spiritual enlightenment, challenged
Fox to disputation.
Before the challenge was received,
Fox had departed, but three of his disciples at
Newport accepted it.
Williams went there in an open boat, 30 miles from
Providence, and, though over seventy years of age, rowed the vessel himself.
There was a three days disputation, which at times was a tumultuous quarrel.
Williams published an account of it, with the title of
George Fox digged out of his Burrowes; to which
Fox replied in a pamphlet entitled,
A New England Firebrand quenched.
Neither was sparing in sharp epithets.