FOX, GEORGE (1624–1691), was the chief founder and early leader of the Quakers, a popular movement without clergy, ritual, or sacraments, gathered from among English Puritan Separatists. Despite frequent imprisonments, he traveled throughout Britain, North America, and northern Europe, calling hearers to experience directly the Spirit of God, met as "the Light of Christ" or "Truth" within each person. Those who were open and obedient to the Light he called upon to gather as "Children of Light" and to bear witness to God's power, which was to conquer the world without outward violence in "the Lamb's War." Fox also gave structure to gatherings, or Meetings of Friends, and wrote 270 tracts and 400 "epistles."

Fox was the son of a Puritan weaver of Fenny Drayton in Leicestershire. As a young man he was apprenticed as a cobbler and shepherd; his sensitivity to temptations caused him intense strain, which in...