George Fox
George Fox (1624-91), English founder of the Society of Friends (the Quakers). The son of a weaver, he was largely self-educated. In 1642 he rejected the established Church and began to travel the country, preaching and establishing congregations. Fox and his followers were repeatedly imprisoned for blasphemy and persecuted until the Toleration Act of 1689. At one of his trials Fox told the judge that he should quake at the name of the Lord, a remark that gave rise to the nickname ‘Quakers’. Fox’s Journal was posthumously published in 1694.
