The names of George Fox, William Penn, and Margaret Fell occupy a premier place among the leaders of seventeenth-century English Quakerism. George Fox, Quaker tradition has claimed, was the prophetic and preeminent first-generation leader from 1652 until his death in 1691. William Penn's chief claim to historical fame was his founding of the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania, as well as his prolific writings in defense of Quakerism and religious toleration in England. Margaret Fell, who married Fox in 1669, has been epitomized most frequently as the “Mother of Quakerism,” a hagiographic title that leaves her role imprecisely defined. Margaret Fell's position was a powerful one in the organization of nascent Quakerism. She came under Fox's influence while Judge Fell, her first husband, was still living. At first a novitiate under Fox's spiritual guidance, she soon became an apt apologist and grass-roots organizer who equaled and in most cases exceeded other leaders in edifying, guiding, and sustaining the Quaker cause. Although Fell, Fox, and Penn were long-term friends despite a wide age difference, Fell's real-life role in this triumvirate of early Quaker leadership largely has been lost in the obscurity and myth of Quaker beginnings.
“He that stoppeth his Ears at the Cry of the Poor, he also shall cry and not be heard” was the warning of Thomas Lawson to Parliament at the time of Charles II's restoration to the English throne in 1660. Lawson, a Quaker school teacher and notable botanist, addressed his special appeal for poor relief to the Restoration Parliament. He, like other Quaker leaders of his day, urged those in authority “let not a Settlement for the Poor be forgotten.” The Quaker movement drew its members from a cross section of the social orders of seventeenth-century England, including a significant number of poor from the lower orders. Although appeals for poor relief were not unique to the Quakers, Thomas Law-son expressed a typical Quaker viewpoint of social obligation to the impecunious. The Quakers consistently addressed the problem of poor relief within their community in practical terms from their earliest organization in 1652.
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