GEORGE FOX.—­The founder of the Society of Friends was born in 1624, in an humble condition of life, and at an early age was apprenticed to a shoemaker and grazier.  Uneducated and unknown, he considered himself as the subject of special religious providence, and at length as supernaturally called of God.  Suddenly abandoning his servile occupation, he came out in 1647, at the age of twenty-three, as the founder of a new sect; an itinerant preacher, he rebuked the multitudes which he assembled by his fervent words.  Much of his success was due to his earnestness and self-abnegation.  He preached in all parts of England, and visited the American colonies.  The name Quaker is said to have been applied to this sect in 1650, when Fox, arraigned before Judge Bennet, told him to “tremble at the word of the Lord.”  The establishment of this sect by such a man is one of the strongest illustrations of the eager religious inquiry of the age.

The works of Fox are a very valuable Journal of his Life and Travels; Letters and Testimonies; Gospel Truth Demonstrated,—­all of which form the best statement of the origin and tenets of his sect.  Fox was a solemn, reverent, absorbed man; a great reader and fluent expounder of the Scriptures, but fanatical and superstitious; a believer in witchcraft, and in his power to detect witches.  The sect which he founded, and which has played so respectable a part in later history, is far more important than the founder himself.  He died in London in 1690.

WILLIAM PENN.—­The fame of Fox in America has been eclipsed by that of his chief convert William Penn.  In an historical or biographical work, the life of Penn would demand extended mention; but his name is introduced here only as one of the theological writers of the day.  He was born in 1644, and while a student at Oxford was converted to the Friends’ doctrine by the preaching of Thomas Loe, a colleague of George Fox.  The son of Admiral Sir William Penn, he was the ward of James II., and afterwards Lord Proprietary and founder of Pennsylvania.  Persecuted for his tenets, he was frequently imprisoned for his preaching and writings.  In 1668 he wrote Truth Exalted and The Sandy Foundation, and when imprisoned for these, he wrote in jail his most famous work, No Cross, no Crown.

After the expulsion of James II., Penn was repeatedly tried and acquitted for alleged attempts to aid the king in recovering his throne.  The malignity of Lord Macaulay has reproduced the charges, but reversed, most unjustly, the acquittals.  His record occupies a large space in American history, and he is reverenced for having established a great colony on the basis of brotherly love.  Poor and infirm, he died in 1718.

ROBERT BARCLAY, who was born in 1648, is only mentioned in this connection on account of his Latin apology for the Quakers, written in 1676, and translated since into English.