Issue 16 Preaching and Mental HealthBlog | The Late Greats Margaret Fell Fox
The Late Greats Margaret Fell Fox
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 26.09.18
England was unsettled in 1652. The civil war had resulted in the execution of Charles I and a period of government by Parliament under the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. The triumph of Puritanism had led to the removal of bishops and the Book of Common Prayer from the Church of England and to the birth of a number of new religious groups. Wandering radical preachers would interrupt church services, as George Fox did one day at Swarthmoor in Cumbria. Amongst the hearers was Margaret Fell, the wife of a local justice. She was ‘convinced’ and for the next 50 years devoted her energies to the Quaker cause.
It was a costly ministry. Because of her refusal (in line with Quaker belief) to take an oath of allegiance or to desist from holding religious meetings, she was imprisoned on more than one occasion and fined heavily. ‘They troubled and persecuted us in diverse ways,’1 was her summary of her experiences when she wrote an account of her life in 1690, when the accession of William and Mary had created a much more tolerant environment. She was by then a widow for the second time. Judge Fell had died in 1658 and eleven years later she had married George Fox (who died in 1690).
