Society of Friends

MP came from the English middle class, and was born into the Anglican church. After an early disregard for religion, then a long period of spiritual struggle, she became a Quaker .

MP became a Quaker minister and preacher, and very soon afterwards a great traveller on missionary journeys.

MP , on a journey of Quaker ministry with her friend Catherine Payton (later Phillips) , travelled nearly nine thousand miles to and around North America.

MP was married at Mountrath to Samuel Neale , a paper-maker who had converted to the Society of Friends through her preaching; that very evening she addressed the assembled Friends, her guests.

While on her missionary trip to America, MP wrote, jointly with Catherine Phillips and several others, an epistle addressed to a meeting of Friends : To the Yearly Meeting to be held at Curles for...

MP was less of an author, either in spirit or practice, than her friend and associate Catherine Phillips , yet writing was an important part of her brief but highly successful career in the mid...

She was born into the Irish cottager or labouring class and into the Society of Friends . The family had a long tradition of Quaker belief and activism. She later observed that her father's cottage...

Although her parents were religious, the young MP had a disposition to keep company unrestrained by the cross of Christ. She lived for many years in disobedience to his holy will, repeatedly hardening her...

MP formed close relationships with many of her fellow Quakers, as it was the practice of the Society to do, by means of sharing work and travel with them. She mentions particularly in her letters...

MP regretted the passing of the days when the Friends had been, although persecuted, more steady, pure, and active in their faith. In her husband's words: She mourned for the obvious declension of our society...

The letter pulls no punches, enumerating the causes for the bad state of the Society of Friends in Virginia, which the writers say has given them much pain. They anatomise the exceedingly low state...

WP writes about her Quaker forebears, of great-grandparents who lived in middle-class comfort in villages since swallowed by urban encroachment.

Money issues arise early in this story. Mr Mead was curate to a small parish in Lincolnshire, and performed the whole duty within eight miles round, for the noble salary of thirty-five pounds a...

To sum up, PS's text gives the impression that she had a difficult man to deal with, and one who was not slow to use her gender as a weapon against her when he saw...

AO , who had left the Unitarian church in 1814 and taken the decision to convert to Quakerism, had her application to join the Society of Friends accepted.