Margaret Fell
Encyclopedia
Religious Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
. Known popularly as the "mother of Quakerism", she is considered one of the Valiant Sixty
Valiant Sixty
The Valiant Sixty were a group of early leaders and activists in the Religious Society of Friends . They were itinerant preachers, mostly from northern England who spread the ideas of the Friends during the second half of the Seventeenth Century, and were also called the First Publishers of Truth...
early Quaker preachers and missionaries.
Life
She was born Margaret AskewAiskew
Aiskew is a village and civil parish in the Hambleton district of North Yorkshire, England. The village is situated to the immediate north-east of Bedale. It was known as Echescol in the Domesday Book...
in Dalton-in-Furness
Dalton-in-Furness
Dalton-in-Furness is a small town of 8,394 people, north east of Barrow-in-Furness, in Cumbria, England.-History:Dalton is mentioned in the Domesday Book, written as "Daltune" as one of the townships forming the Manor of Hougun held by Earl Tostig. Historically, it was the capital of Furness...
, a small town in the north of England. (Dalton was then in Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
and is now in Cumbria
Cumbria
Cumbria , is a non-metropolitan county in North West England. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local authority, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumbria's largest settlement and county town is Carlisle. It consists of six districts, and in...
). She married Thomas Fell
Thomas Fell
Thomas Fell , was vice-chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster.Fell was born at Hawkeswell, near Ulverston. He was the son of George Fell, a gentleman of ancient Lancashire family. He was admitted student of Gray's Inn in 1623, called to the bar in 1631, and practised successfully for several years...
, a barrister, in 1632, and became the lady of Swarthmore Hall. In 1641, Thomas became a Justice of the Peace for Lancashire, then in 1645 he became a member of Parliament
Long Parliament
The Long Parliament was made on 3 November 1640, following the Bishops' Wars. It received its name from the fact that through an Act of Parliament, it could only be dissolved with the agreement of the members, and those members did not agree to its dissolution until after the English Civil War and...
. Thomas Fell ceased to be a member from 1647 to 1649 when he disapproved of Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....
's assumption of authority.
In late June of 1652, George Fox
George Fox
George Fox was an English Dissenter and a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers or Friends.The son of a Leicestershire weaver, Fox lived in a time of great social upheaval and war...
visited Swarthmoor Hall. Margaret was away when he arrived, but upon her return in the evening, Margaret Fell met him who 'opened us a book that we had never read in, nor indeed had never heard that it was our duty to read in it (to wit) the Light of Christ in our consciences, our minds never being turned towards it before.' A day or two later it was lecture day at the parish church, and Margaret invited George Fox to attend with them. Initially he declined, but then came in after the singing and asked for liberty to speak. It was here that Margaret heard the ministry of George Fox
George Fox
George Fox was an English Dissenter and a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers or Friends.The son of a Leicestershire weaver, Fox lived in a time of great social upheaval and war...
and she was so stirred by his the beginning of his speech, she stood up in her pew and wondered at his doctrine. Over the next weeks she and many of her household became convinced. Over the next six years, Swarthmoor Hall became a center of Quaker activity; she served as an unofficial secretary for the new movement, receiving and forwarding letters from roving missionaries, and occasionally passing along admonitions to them from Fox, Richard Hubberthorne
Richard Hubberthorne
Richard Hubberthorne was an early Quaker preacher and writer active in the 1650s and early 1660s until his death in Newgate prison....
, James Nayler
James Nayler
James Nayler was an English Quaker leader. He is among the members of the Valiant Sixty, a group of early Quaker preachers and missionaries. At the peak of his career, he preached against enclosure and the slave trade....
, and others. She wrote many epistles
Epistle (Quaker)
Quaker epistle: in the 17th Century, the Quaker movement revived the Gospel use of the word "epistle" to mean an advisory or admonitory letter, sent to a group of people, sometimes termed a "general epistle"...
herself and collected and disbursed funds for those on missions. After her husband's death in 1658, she retained control of Swarthmore Hall, which remained a meeting place and haven from persecution, even though it was sometimes, in the 1660s, raided by government forces.
Because she was one of the few founding members of the Religious Society of Friends who was an established member of the gentry
Gentry
Gentry denotes "well-born and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past....
, she was frequently called upon to intercede in cases of persecution or arrest of leaders such as Fox. After the Stuart Restoration, she traveled from Lancashire to London to petition King Charles II
Charles II of England
Charles II was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.Charles II's father, King Charles I, was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War...
and his parliament in 1660 and 1662 for freedom of conscience in religious matters. A submission signed by George Fox and other prominent (male) Quakers was only made subsequently in November of 1660. Although the structure and phraseology of these submissions were quite different, the import was similar, arguing that, although Friends wished to see the world changed, they would use persuasion rather than violence towards what they regarded as a "heavenly" (i.e. spiritual) end.
In 1664 Margaret Fell was arrested for failing to take an oath and for allowing Quaker Meetings to be held in her home. She defended herself by saying that "as long as the Lord blessed her with a home, she would worship him in it". She spent six months in Lancaster Gaol, whereafter she was sentenced to life imprisonment and forfeiture of her property. She remained in prison until 1668, during which time she wrote religious pamphlets and epistles. Perhaps her most famous work is "Women's Speaking Justified", a scripture-based argument for women's ministry, and one of the major texts on women's religious leadership in the 17th century. In this short pamphlet, Fell bases her argument for equality of the sexes on the basic premises of Quakerism that is spiritual equality. Her belief was that God created all human beings, therefore both men and women were capable of not only possessing the Inner Light but also the ability to be a prophet.
Having been released by order of the King and council, she married George Fox in 1669. On returning to Lancashire after her marriage, she was again imprisoned for about a year in Lancaster for breaking the Conventicle Act
Conventicle Act 1664
The Conventicle Act of 1664 was an Act of the Parliament of England that forbade conventicles...
. Shortly after her release, George Fox departed on a religious mission to America, and he too was imprisoned again on his return in 1673. Margaret again traveled to London to intercede on his behalf, and he was eventually freed in 1675. After this, they spent about a year together at Swarthmore, collaborating on defending the recently created organizational structure of separate women's meetings for discipline against their anti-Fox opponents.
George Fox spent most of the rest of his life thereafter abroad or in London until his death in 1691, while Margaret Fell spent most of the rest of her life at Swarthmore. Surviving both husbands by a number of years, she continued to take an active part in the affairs of the Society including the changes in the 1690s following partial legal tolerance of Quakers, when she was well into her eighties. In the last decade of her life, she firmly opposed the effort of her fellow believers in Lancashire to maintain certain traditional Quaker standards of conduct (for example, in matters of dress). She died aged 88.
In literature
Margaret Fell's meeting with George Fox and her subsequent conversion are the subject of the first part of the novelNovel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
The Peaceable Kingdom
The Peaceable Kingdom: An American Saga
The Peaceable Kingdom: An American Saga is a historical novel in two parts by Quaker author Jan de Hartog. It describes the first meeting of George Fox and Margaret Fell, the latter's conversion, and a portion of the history of colonial Pennsylvania.Terry Linkletter of Amazon.com has said this...
by Jan de Hartog
Jan de Hartog
Jan de Hartog was a Dutch playwright, novelist and occasional social critic who moved to the United States in the early 1960s and became a Quaker.- Early years :...
.