Immigration of the Irish Quakers
into Pennsylvania
1682 - 1750
With Their Early History in Ireland
by
Albert Cook Myers, M. L.
Member of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
"There is not one of the family but what likes the country very well and wod.  If we were in Ireland again come here Directly it being the best country for working folk & tradesmen of any in the world, but for Drunkards and Idlers, they cannot live well any where."  - Letter of an Irish Quaker, 1725
The Author
Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
1902

CHAPTER I.
THE RISE OF QUAKERISM IN ENGLAND
Page 3

THE period of the Civil War and Commonwealth in England was one of controversy and upheaval.  The introduction of the Bible into every cottage of the land had set the people to thinking, and they gave themselves up to the consideration of questions of civil and religious liberty and to the solution of the great problems of life and death.  Puritanism became a mighty power, and in the middle of the seventeenth century it arose in all its strength and freed the nation from the yoke of Episcopacy and from the tyranny of Charles I.  Under the Commonwealth and Cromwell toleration existed in some measure, and their was greater opportunity than formerly for the development of such sects as that of the Society of Friends or so-called Quakers.

State of England in the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.

The history of the early years of the Society of Friends is the history of its great leader and founder.  George Fox (1624-1691) was born at Drayton-in-the-Clay, now known as Fenny Drayton, Leicestershire, England, in 1624.  He says, "My father's name was Christopher Fox;

Beginnings of Quakerism.

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George Fox

he was by profession a weaver, an honest man.  . . . The neighbors called him Rightous Christer.  My mother was an honest woman; her maiden name was Mary Lago, of the family of the Lagos and of the stock of the martyrs." 1  At an early age Fox had a "gravity and stayedness of mind not usual in children,"1  and as he grew up, under good home influences, he came to know "pureness and righteousness";1 so truthful adn so determined was he the that it was a saying among his associates, "If George says 'Verily' there's no altering him."2      In 1643, as a youth of nineteen, "graceful . . . in countenance,"3 and with a bright piercing eye he left his home, and spent the next  five years wandering from sect to sect, weighing and considering the religious opinions which obtained in that seething and fervid time; but with all his seeking he seemed unable to find anything that appealed to his spiritual condition.  Finally, after much conflict of spirit, he became convinced that the true source of religious comfort and consolation is the "Inner Light," the voice of Good speaking directly to each human soul without the aid of any earthly mediator.  With this idea as the basis of his religious system, George Fox developed those doctrines and

1. Journal, I. 2. Ibid., 2. 3. Thomas Ellwood's testimony in Fox's Journal

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practices peculiar to the Society of Friends and felt himself divinely called to proclaim this message to the world.

In 1647 and 1648, amid the conflicting ideas of the time, he began to preach, and went forth with all the ardor of a youthful knight of the Crusades, sans peur et sans veproche, spreading his new doctrine of the "Divine Light" through the towns and shires of England.  He appealed to judges and justices to give righteous judgments, and to inn-keepers to be moderate in the sale of drink.  He petitioned Parliament against allowing more inns than were needful for travelers.  He raised his voice against wakes, feasts, sports, and plays.  He went to fairs and markets urging men to deal justly and to speak the truth.  He went into the "steeple houses" and openly testified against a "hireling ministry" and formalism of worship, the churches in which he spoke being usually those belonging to the Independants, who allowed discussion after the sermon.  For these and other peculiar testimonies, so foreign to the ideas of the time, he was subjected to the most severe and cruel persecution; but not even years of confinement in dark and loathsome dungeons could restrain his dauntless spirit.      The first years of his ministry were spent chiefly and the midland counties, where he found but few assistants in his missionary work, but when he

His Work and Followers

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reached the northern counties many were convinced, and by 1654 he had organized a band of sixty traveling ministers, who had caught his spirit and who had began to preach his doctrines.  This zealous missionary band of young spirits - Yeomen, tradesmen, gentlemen - went up and down the land carrying the message of Quakerism with such power and courage that thousands flocked to their standard, and by the end of the century, 60,000 Quakers were numbered in England.1

------------------------- 1. Brown in Traill's Social England, IV., 258-9

 

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