George Fox, founder of Quakerism, lived in England from 1624 to 1691. His father was a weaver, and Fox is thought to have been a cobbler’s apprentice and a shepherd.
In 1652, at about 28 years old, he climbed Pendle Hill in Lancashire, England, and had a vision at the top of numerous people in need of ministry which led him to become a traveling preacher. After his experience on Pendle Hill, he felt comforted by the indwelling of Jesus Christ, who he believed could speak to his condition.
Shortly thereafter, as his travels continued, he attended a gathering of religious dissenters that was meeting at a chapel outside the town of Sedburgh, a little over 40 miles to the north of Pendle Hill. “I was made to open to the people that the steeplehouse & that ground on which it stood was no more holier than that mountain,” he later wrote, and so rather than step inside the church, he positioned himself atop a rock on the hillside and, as the crowd gathered near, “declared God’s everlasting truth and Word of life freely and largely for about the space of three hours.” This sermon is considered by many to be the beginning of the Quaker movement.
Fox believed in the Inner Light as coming from God and thought of this as a source of religious authority above creeds and the Bible. Fox was biblically literate. He believed that each person could directly connect with God, without needing clergy to intercede.
He refused commonly accepted customs such as removing his hat for those considered his social superiors and swearing oaths in court. Rejecting hat honor stemmed from Fox’s conviction that everyone is equal before God. Fox eschewed oaths because he believed Friends should maintain such integrity that they always tell the truth.
Fox suggested that Quakers arrange themselves into yearly, monthly, and quarterly meetings. Friends currently have the same structure.
In 1649, he went to prison for his religious beliefs for the first time. Between 1649 and 1673, Fox went to prison eight times. In 1660, when the British monarchy was restored, anti-Quaker laws were passed.
In 1669, Fox traveled in the ministry to Ireland. He married English Quaker Margaret Fell the same year. Fox and Fell were married for 20 years though often separated by prison and travel.
In 1660, Fox drafted an early version of a declaration to British King Charles II in response to accusations that he and other Quakers were conspiring against the king, insisting that “the Spirit of Christ which leads us into all Truth will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the Kingdom of Christ nor for the kingdoms of this world.” This document became an important early statement of the Friends peace testimony.
In 1671, Fox attended the first yearly meeting convened in London. He then journeyed to Barbados, where many colonists, including Quakers, relied on enslaved people for labor. Although Fox opposed harm to enslaved people and advocated ending their periods of forced labor after three decades, he, like most Friends in that time, did not broadly condemn the practice of holding people in bondage. In recent years, Friends have reappraised Fox’s conduct in Barbados through a more critical lens.
From there, Fox traveled to Jamaica and North America. He visited Quakers in the Chesapeake Bay; Long Island, New York; Rhode Island; New Jersey; Virginia; and the Carolinas. He spent four months with Indigenous people.
He spent 1675–1677 at Swarthmoor Hall near Ulverston, England, recovering from an illness. In 1675, he dictated large portions of what would later be compiled together and be published as his Journal.
In 1677, he joined Robert Barclay and William Penn on a trip to Germany and Holland. Throughout the 1680s he urged Parliament to oppose religious persecution, leading to the 1687 Declaration of Indulgence and the 1689 Act of Toleration.
In the last years of his life, Fox visited Quakers in the vicinity of London and wrote numerous pamphlets. He died at the age of 66. His grave marker can be found in the former Quaker burial grounds at Bunhill Fields in Islington, just over a mile northwest from St. Paul’s Cathedral in central London.
Learn more at Friends Journal
“George Fox and the Bible,” Thomas Gates
“The Glory of God Was Revealed,” Marcelle Martin
“The Radical Original Vision of George Fox,” Marcelle Martin
“When the Earth Shook,” Matt Rosen
“Fox at 400,” Sharlee DiMenichi
“The Life of George Fox as a Model for Meeting for Worship,” John Pitts Corry
“For me, it is impossible to imagine Quakerism without George Fox.
It would be like Buddhism without the Buddha, Islam without Muhammad.”