Crossword Dictionary

George Fox

George Fox, (born July 1624, Drayton-in-the-Clay, Leicestershire, England—died January 13, 1691, London), English preacher and missionary and founder of the Society of Friends (or Quakers). His personal religious experience made him hostile to church conventions and established his reliance on what he saw as “inner light,” or God-given inspiration over scriptural authority or creeds. He recorded the birth of the Quaker movement in his Journal.

Fox was the son of a weaver in the English village of Drayton-in-the-Clay (now Fenny Drayton), Leicestershire. Probably apprenticed for a while to a cobbler, he may also have tended sheep, but there is little evidence of any adult business occupation or of much formal education. He always seemed to have a modest amount of money.

He read extensively and wrote legibly. At the age of 18 he left home in search of satisfying religious counsel or experience and later reported in his Journal various personal religious experiences or direct revelations, which he called “openings,” that corrected, in his estimation, the traditional concepts of faith and practice in English religious life.

 Fox evidently was, as Thomas Carlyle says, a man of enormous self-confidence, one who attracted rather than repelled. A magnetic personality, he was widely respected and admired by such men as William Penn, who left in writing an appreciation of Fox that is still the best summary of his character. Fox’s own Journal is naturally not entirely objective, but with its many details it forms the fullest account of the rise of Quakerism as well as of Fox himself.