George Fox

Timeline

1. c. 1624–1652Fenny Drayton · LeicestershireSon of a weaver, he left home around 1643 to seek out ministers and Separatists, gradually becoming convinced that Christ could directly reveal himself to individuals without university-trained clergy as intermediaries. In 1652 he climbed Pendle Hill in Lancashire, reporting a vision of 'a great people to be gathered,' and began preaching to Seekers at Firbank Fell and elsewhere, from which the movement took shape.
2. 1652–1660Swarthmoor Hall · CumbriaIn 1652 he entered Swarthmoor Hall, the estate of judge Thomas Fell and Margaret Fell, which became the organizational hub of early Quakerism. He promoted the establishment of weekly and monthly meetings and dispatched 'publishers of truth' to preach, while himself being repeatedly imprisoned for refusing to remove his hat, refusing oaths, and attacking the clergy. By the late 1650s Quakerism had spread across England, Wales, and Ireland.
3. 1669–1691London · LondonHe married the widowed Margaret Fell in 1669. In 1671–1673 he visited Quaker communities in Barbados and North America; in 1677 he traveled with William Penn and Robert Barclay to Holland and Germany. Persecution intensified after the Restoration, and he continued to be imprisoned while lobbying Parliament. After the 1689 Toleration Act granted limited freedom of worship to Protestant dissenters, he mostly directed the yearly meetings in London, dying there on 13 January 1691 and being buried at Bunhill Fields Nonconformist burial ground.