Society of Friends

In this tract MF argues against the increasing emphasis on a specialised Quaker dress, grey in colour. She writes that young Friends . . . can soon get into an outward Garb, to be all...

MF , on her first visit to London, presented the earliest formal Quaker peace testimony to Charles II , whom she went on to visit several times more.

Arrested in her turn at Holker, MF was imprisoned in Lancaster Castle for her Quaker activism.

MF addressed the restored monarch boldly and directly in a number of works; she was the first to explain to him the non-violent nature of Quakerism .

MF composed her latest known work, An Epistle to Friends, urging the Society not to isolate themselves from society by adopting the distinctive dress with which they nevertheless proceeded to identify themselves.

MF was the most prolific, as well as one of the most influential, Quaker writers. She wrote letters; her single-volume collected works contained forty-five tracts, nearly all written in the 1650s and 1660s. They appeared...

Born in the English gentry and brought up an Anglican , she became a Quaker in middle age. After this she quickly became a leader in the movement. Her class status, unusual among Quaker preachers...

Thomas Fell's estate, Swarthmoor Hall in Lancashire, was MF 's home for most of her adult life, and has since become a shrine to the history of the Society of Friends .

CF is interested less in appearances than how things work. On her first journey she made this observation of the spire of Salisbury Cathedral: being so high it appeares to us below as sharpe...

MF , one of the Valiant Sixty (that is, the earliest Quakers or members of the Society of Friends to undertake preaching journeys abroad), remained unpublished except for some strongly politicized letters and a one-sixth...

It is not known whether she belonged to the Church of England or some other sect before she joined the Society of Friends (in earlier 1652, along with her employers). Her early conversion to...

Before she embarked on the Quaker activism that made her famous, MF worked as a servant to a couple named Tomlinson (Richard and Elizabeth) who lived at Selby in Yorkshire. As a Quaker minister...

In Boston the two women at once fell under suspicion of being witches. They were searched for bodily marks of witchcraft (even betwixt their toes, and amongst their hair), then thrown into jail. Their...

Punishments laid down in 1657 for members of the Society of Friends daring to come to Massachusetts consisted of physical violence: whippings, cropped ears, and tongues bored with a hot iron.

The reception in Izmir of MF and her associates shows that Quakers were as unacceptable to the English establishment abroad as at home. Her celebrated audience with Mehmet IV was reported in print a few...