The Journal of George Fox by George Fox

First published: 1694

Edition(s) used:The Journal of George Fox, edited by John L. Nickalls. London: Religious Society of Friends, 1975

Genre(s): Nonfiction

Subgenre(s): Autobiography; didactic treatise; handbook for living; journal or diary; spiritual treatise

Core issue(s): The divine; preaching; Quakers

Overview

William Penn’s preface to Thomas Ellwood’s edition of the Journal (1694) depicted George Fox as “a strong man, a new and heavenly-minded man, a divine and a naturalist, and all of God Almighty’s making.” Defending the master against detractors, he called attention to Fox’s unusual insight into persons (confirmed by the type of persons who chose to follow him), his extraordinary gifts in interpreting Scripture, his potency in prayer, his innocence and selflessness, his tirelessness in spreading his message and in service of others, and his penchant for organization and leadership.

Like other Quaker journals, Fox’s served an apologetic purpose, that is, to project Fox as a model of the behavior of Friends which, if imitated, could improve the human condition. Far from being a daily log of events, the “journal” presented vignettes that could illustrate the main features of this remarkable person and the movement that he began. The main body of the work recorded Fox’s life and work up to 1674; the remainder filled out the last years with letters and other data.

Fox related in the first part as much of his early life as would inform readers and thus praise God concerning “the dealings of the Lord with me, and the various exercises, trials, and troubles through which he led me in order to prepare and fit me for the work unto which he had appointed me.” His chief object would appear to have been to establish his character in response to criticism. Neighbors called his father “Righteous Christer.” His mother, Mary Lago, was “of the stock of the martyrs.” At an early age he developed “a gravity and stayedness of mind and spirit not usual in children”; by age eleven he “knew pureness and righteousness” in the sense of acting faithfully both “inwardly to God and outwardly to man.” Acquaintances commented, “If George says ’Verily’ there is no altering him.”

At nineteen Fox experienced a shock that triggered his prophetic ministry. At a local fair one of his cousins and a friend, both professing Christians, asked him to drink part of a jug of beer with them but then, as the alcohol took effect, teased him, demanding that whoever refused to drink should pay the entire cost. Not one for games, Fox threw down a groat and departed abruptly. Deeply disturbed, he perceived a calling to “forsake all, both young and old, and keep out of all, and be as a stranger unto all.” For the next several years he became a “seeker,” agonizing day and night in a quest for “heavenly wisdom.” He experienced a series of “openings” or “considerations.” Education at Oxford or Cambridge was “not enough to make a man fit to be a minister of Christ.” The God who made heaven and earth does not dwell in temples or churches but in people’s hearts. God anoints one inwardly to interpret Scriptures and to teach. Women have souls just as men do and thus should be treated as equals. Not surprisingly, Fox reported, his first associate was a woman named Elizabeth Hooten, who joined him in 1647.

Nowhere that Fox turned—whether to priests of the Church of England or to dissenters—could he find any who, as he expressed it, “could speak to my condition.” Near despair after four years of wandering, he heard a voice say, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.” He found this confirmed experimentally as he initiated his remarkable prophetic ministry in 1647. Vivid mystical experiences prepared him boldly to articulate his appeal for a devout and holy life. First a trickle and then a flood of conversions occurred, as Fox urged his hearers to turn from darkness to the Light of Christ within. However, he soon set off opposition, for he coupled his message with a social protest against doffing his hat and saying “thee” and “thou” without respect to class or station. “O, the rage and scorn, the heat and fury that arose! Oh, the blows, punchings, beatings, and imprisonments that we underwent for not putting off our hats to men!” However, Fox did not relent. He warned schoolteachers to tutor their charges in sobriety and thundered against “steeplehouses” and “hireling” priests.

At Nottingham in 1649 Fox was hauled off to prison for the first time when he interrupted a congregation at worship and preached that God does not dwell in a temple made with hands. The local sheriff, however, was so touched by him after a few days that he took Fox into his own home and began a ministry somewhat like Fox’s. This inflamed the local magistrates so much they had Fox arrested and taken to the common prison again. At Mansfield-Woodhouse his assault on superficial religion resulted in a horrible beating by the parishioners, but the magistrate set him free and he recovered with amazing rapidity. As he met such opposition, Fox was strengthened by what would appear to have been mystical experiences. At Coventry, for instance, he claimed that he “was ravished with the sense of the love of God and greatly strengthened in my inward man.” At Derby in October, 1650, he was sentenced to six months in prison for continued disturbances and his claim that Christ had taken away all his sin. In Fox’s trial Justice Gervase Bennet was the first to call the Friends “Quakers” because they bid other people to tremble. A cell did not stop Fox. His witness to prisoners and his jailer earned him some freedom of movement within a mile radius around the jail. He also wrote, initiating what became a powerful facet of the Quaker witness as “publishers of Truth,” but his directness tended to work against him and lengthened his sentences. Many of the social views Fox espoused have a modern ring. For example, he opposed capital punishment (for stealing cattle, money, or other things), advocating instead the mercy of God taught by Scriptures.

Undeterred by nearly a year in prison, Fox continued to travel all over the Midlands and the northern part of England proclaiming his controversial message. Attacks continued, but Fox also won converts from all classes, enough to cause some priests to flee and lock the churches. A critical stage was reached in 1652. Fox’s converts in that year included Francis Howgill, a key defender of the Friends until his death in 1669, Edward Burrough (1634-1662), who died in Newgate prison, and Margaret Fell, who married Fox in 1659. The Fell estate, Swarthmoor, soon became a center for Fox’s rapidly growing movement. Judge Fell (d. 1658), though never a follower, protected Fox and the Friends, seeking warrants for the arrest of a mob that mugged Fox at Ulverston after he interrupted the worship in the “steeplehouse.” He also aided Fox in a defense of his views at Lancaster sessions. Fox appropriately called him “very serviceable to the Truth.”

The central portion of Fox’s Journal has a somewhat repetitious character: bold witness, winning of some, harassment and persecution by others, imprisonment and abuse by authorities, yet the Friends’ movement spread despite all, as Fox would say, as “the power of the Lord went over all.” In 1654 Fox, a genius at organization, dispatched a notable troop of preachers all over England—Francis Howgill, Edward Burrough, John Camm, John Audland, Richard Hubberthorne, George Whitehead, Thomas Holme, and others—with instructions to place their trust in the Light Within. The Quakers encountered opposition from many sources besides the established Church—Ranters, who frequently disrupted meetings; Baptists, who looked upon the Friends’ view of Scriptures as heretical; and Oliver Cromwell, who, though he favored independents and admired Fox, did not know what to do with disruptions caused by the Quaker “publishers of Truth.” After 1655 Cromwell increasingly ignored Fox’s pleas for protection.

The Friends’ movement suffered severe damage as a result of James Nayler, at one time a major proclaimer of the Quaker way, getting caught up in what Fox called “imaginations” and leading some off in a rebellion that resulted in his death. Fox openly repudiated him in September of 1656. Persecution also evidently increased, for Fox complained that no one could describe what Quakers underwent in that time.

In 1657 Fox itinerated through Wales. Indicative of his own confidence in “the power over all,” he claimed credit for adequate rain in areas where many had joined the Friends and blamed drought on disbelief in other areas. There he seems to have encountered less opposition than in England. He rebuked Cromwell when the latter appealed for aid for Protestant refugees from Poland and Bohemia while the Protector himself persecuted Protestants in England. The situation did not improve during the brief rule of Richard Cromwell (1658-1660). Fox welcomed the restoration of the monarchy. Rumors circulated that Friends would take up arms to fight for Charles II, but Fox urged them everywhere to “keep out of the powers of the earth that run into wars and fightings, which make not for peace but go from that.”

The return of Charles (May 25, 1660) did not bring immediate relief to the harried Quakers. Fox was arrested almost immediately at Swarthmoor and taken to Lancaster, where he was charged as “a disturber of the peace of the nation, a common enemy to His Majesty our lord the King, a chief upholder of the Quakers’ sect,” and a fomenter of insurrections. Fox denied the charges vigorously, citing Quaker pacifism. Margaret Fell also interceded but, now that Judge Fell had died, with little effect. Fox then applied directly to King Charles and obtained his release after twenty weeks in Lancaster prison. The Friends, who had suffered impounding of property and imprisonment for refusal to pay tithes to the Church in Cromwell’s day, fared better under the monarchy at first. An uprising of Fifth Monarchy people, however, occasioned a new outburst of persecution, to which the Quakers responded in January, 1661, with Declaration from the Harmless and Innocent People of God, Called Quakers, Against All Plotters and Fighters in the World, in which they articulated a pacifist stance. As a consequence, King Charles acquitted them of complicity with the rebels and set them free. At the intercession of Edward Burroughs, the king also commanded that execution of Quakers in New England (begun in 1659) be halted.

In 1661 Quakers initiated visits outside the British Isles. Fox himself continued his activities throughout England, organizing his following through monthly as well as quarterly meetings in 1667. Like other dissenters, the Quakers suffered again under the Second Coventicle Act (1670). Fox himself, his health damaged by frequent beatings and imprisonment in dreadful conditions, lost both hearing and sight for a brief time but recovered sufficiently to visit North America, although he suffered frequent illness the rest of his life.

From 1671 on, Fox’s Journal had to be continued by reconstruction from various sources. (Thomas Ellwood put together a narrative as though written by Fox, but John L. Nickalls, the current editor, has simply incorporated the letters, Fox’s American travel diary for October, 1671, until April 11, 1673, and other materials. Fox’s autobiography ended in 1675. The Nickalls edition replaces Ellwood’s narrative with a supplementary account of Fox’s last years composed by Henry J. Cadbury.) Fox spent a couple of years at Swarthmoor (1675-1677), then started traveling again despite severe physical problems. In July of 1677 he departed for the continent, visiting Friends in Germany and Holland, and, upon returning in 1678, resumed his itinerary around England. He made a second visit to Holland in 1684.

Christian Themes

The legacy of Fox’s Journal for Christianity in general and the Society of Friends in particular can be summarized as follows:

•There is a Light Within that shows human beings what is evil and in which they may find unity; this “Light” is the divine made sufficiently available to humankind.

•Salvation involves turning to the Light, to Christ, which is both within and also transcendent, and it is open to all, not just an “elect.”

•The Light Within does not conflict with Scriptures, for the Scriptures were a product of the Light, but it alone has infallible authority.

•The saints on earth may find unity in the Light such as they will experience in heaven; applied here and now, this unity necessitates treating other persons equally.

Sources for Further Study

Fox, George. The Journal. Edited with an introduction and notes by Nigel Smith. New York: Penguin Books, 1998. Smith’s introduction and notes offer background and historical as well as biographical context. Illustrated with a reproduction of the 1694 title page; bibliography, indexes.

Jones, Rufus. George Fox: Seeker and Friend. New York: Harper & Bros., 1930. Still an excellent biography, by a key interpreter of early Quakerism.

King, Rachel Hadley. George Fox and the Light Within, 1650-1660. Philadelphia: Friends Books Store, 1940. An insightful analysis of this central concept in Fox’s thought and life.

Monagham, Hanna Darlington. “Dear George”: George Fox, Man and Prophet. Philadelphia: Franklin, 1970. A critical biography.