QUAKERISM’S BEGINNINGS

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34047, 10 January 1976, Page 8

QUAKERISM’S BEGINNINGS

George Fox and the Valiant Sixty. By Elfrida Vipont. Hamish Hamilton. 127 pp. Appendices and index. N.Z. price $3.85. George Fox, brought before the magistrates at Derby in 1650 accused of blasphemy, bade his judges tremble at the word of God. One of the magistrates, Justice Bennett, in scornful response called Fox and his friends “Quakers” thus bestowing a nickname which has lasted to this day. Quakerism or the Society of Friends really began with Fox’s discovery during his travels in Westmoreland, North Lancashire and Yorkshire in 1652 of small groups of Seekers who, like himself ■were disenchanted with the established church and were eager to hear his message of the living Spirit.

In this short but fascinating volume Elfrida Vipont has combined a biography of Fox and a brief history of the beginnings of the Quaker movement. She records first what little is known of George Fox’s boyhood in the village of Fenny Drayton in Leicestershire where he was born in 1624, his gradual disillusionment with the church of his parents and the forging of his own individual faith in the years between 1647-52.

Unfortunately after her moving account of Fox’s great sermon on Firbank Fell on June 13, 1652 (when more than 1000 people listened in silence for three hours) Ms Vipont’s narrative loses pace and interest. She describes how Swarthmore Hall became the centre for the new movement, and how the first Quaker missionaries, the “Valiant Sixty” set out from the north-west of England to all corners of Great Britain, to Europe, America and even to Adrianople where Mary Fisher preached to the Sultan of Turkey. It is an incredible story of courage and determination in the face of constant and fierce persecution but the author attempts to tell too much in too little space so that the impact of each individual story is blunted and the historical figures become names in a list rather than living people. This fault aside, the book is a sympathetic and simple account of the beginning of a movement which has had an influence in Western countries out of all proportion to its relatively small numbers. For anyone who plans to visit the north-west of England this book would provide an interesting introduction to the historical places and personalities of the “Galilee of Quakerism.”