Biography of George Fox

The English spiritual reformer George Fox (1624-1691) was the chief inspirer of the Society of Friends, or Quakers.

The son of a weaver, George Fox was born in July 1624 at Fenny Drayton, Leicestershire. He became a cobbler with little book learning beyond the Bible. When he was 19, a voice told him to "forsake all"; so he became a dropout, wandering about England in a solitary quest for religious truth. Gradually he clarified his beliefs, convinced that he derived them from direct experiences of God's light within him, "without the help of any man, book, or writing."

Holding that every man and woman could be similarly enlightened by Christ, Fox began "declaring truth" in public and developed into a dynamic, fanatically sincere speaker. He preached in barns, houses, and fields and in churches "after the priest had done"; but because his zeal sometimes led him to interrupt services, he was imprisoned as a disturber of public order. Inspired by the "Inner Voice," he became spiritual leader of some Nottinghamshire former Baptists but then went to the north of England, preaching, praying, and protesting at every opportunity. In 1652 he trudged about Yorkshire, a sturdy figure in leather breeches wearing a broadbrimmed hat over the ringlets of hair which fell to his shoulders.

Though Fox denounced creeds, forms, rites, external sacraments, and a "man-made" ministry, he became something of a negative formalist, refusing to doff his hat to anyone or to call months and days by their pagan names; and he used "thee" and "thou" instead of "you." Such flouting of conventions provoked intense opposition. Fox was repeatedly beaten by rowdies and persecuted by the pious, and the forces of law and order imprisoned him eight times for not conforming to the establishment. But his indomitable courage and his emphasis on the spirit rather than the letter of religion won him converts, even among his persecutors.

Paradoxically, this opponent of institutional religion showed a genius for organizing fellowships of Friends complete with unpaid officers, regular meetings, and funding arrangements. As a result, though his message was universal, individualistic, and spiritual, Fox founded what, by 1700, became the largest Nonconformist sect in England. In 1654 he organized a team of some 60 men and women as a mission to southern England. After converting many there, he extended his own preaching to Scotland (1657-1658), Wales (1657), Ireland (1669), the West Indies and America (1671-1673), the Netherlands (1677 and 1684), and Germany (1677). By 1660 he was issuing epistles to the Pope, the Turkish Sultan, and the Emperor of China. He was a strange mixture of fanaticism and common sense, selflessness and exhibitionism, liberalism and literalism.

In 1669 Fox married the outstanding female leader in the Quaker movement, Margaret, widow of his friend and patron Thomas Fell. But God's service took priority over their partnership, which was interrupted by his missions, his imprisonments in 1673-1675, and his supervision of the movement. He died in London on Jan. 13, 1691.

Fox composed hundreds of tracts for his times, defending principles of the Friends and exposing other men as sinners and ministers of the "Great Whore of Babylon;" but it is by his Journal, a record of his day-to-day activities and thoughts, that he is best remembered.

Further Reading

• The first edition of Fox's Journal (1694) was a revision of the original texts. The two-volume edition by Norman Penney, with an introduction by T. Edmund Harvey (1911), is based on the chief source manuscript; and there is a revised text of it, also by Penney (1924). The standard edition of the Journal is the revised edition of John L. Nickalls (1952). All of these editions contain the preface by William Penn. The eight-volume edition of Fox's Works (1831) is not readily accessible.
• Among biographical studies, Vernon Noble, The Man in Leather Breeches: The Life and Times of George Fox (1953), is for the general reader. More specialized are Rachel Hadley King, Fox and the Light Within, 1650-1660 (1940), and Henry E. Wildes, Voice of the Lord: A Biography of George Fox (1965). Isabel Ross, Margaret Fell: Mother of Quakerism (1949), is a study of Fox's wife. Hugh Barbour, The Quakers in Puritan England (1964), relates Fox to the historical background, including the findings of more recent research. There is more background detail in William C. Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism (1912; 2d ed. rev. 1955) and The Second Period of Quakerism (1919; 2d ed. 1961).