FOX, GEORGE, the founder of the Society of Friends (q.v.), commonly called Quakers, was born in July 1624, at Fenny Drayton in the south of Leicestershire. His father, a woollen-weaver, apprenticed him at an early age to a man who combined the trades of shoemaking, wool-dealing, and farming. With him George was principally employed in tending sheep—an occupation which suited his meditative disposition. When about nineteen years of age his religious convictions deepened to such an extent as to make him believe he was the subject of a special divine call to leave his native place and his friends, 'to forsake all, young and old, to keep out of the way of all, and to be a stranger to all.' Bible in hand, he wandered about the country, spending even his nights in the open air, a small competency he had supplying his slender wants. From his clothing he became known as 'the man in the leather breeches.' He soon began to attend meetings, and often to interrupt divine services, especially when these were conducted by 'professors,' persons whom he believed to be formalists and not genuine Christians, and when held in 'steeple-houses' and called together by church-bells, to which he had a special antipathy. The church he held to be the pillar and ground of truth, made up of living stones and lively members, a spiritual house of which Christ is the head. He was not, he said, the head of a mixed multitude, or of an old house composed of lime, stone, and wood. The 'inward light,' in which all orthodox Christians now believe, though to him it seemed a special revelation which he afterwards found in the Scriptures, was the central idea of his teaching. He was not only a great religious, but a great social reformer. As the former he inveighed against everything approaching to sacerdotalism and formalism. As the latter he ran a tilt against all social conventionalism. Not only priests, but lawyers and soldiers, were obnoxious to him as the embodiment of principles which he hated. Everywhere he went he was a marked man: his dress, his mode of speech, his manners, were different from those of others. 'The Lord' forbade him 'to put off his hat to any, high or low,' and 'he was required to thee and thou all men and women, without any respect to rich or poor, high or low, great or small. And as he travelled up and down, he was not to bid people good morning or good evening, neither might he bow or scrape with his leg to any one.' He saw the evils of intemperance, and denounced all public amusements. He thus came into collision with all sorts of people, and his life is indeed little else than a record of insults, persecutions, and imprisonments, to which his zeal and indiscretions subjected him. His experiences of prison were numerous, and of such a nature as to make him one of the earlier of prison reformers. Arrested on one occasion by Colonel Hacker, he was taken to London to be examined by the Protector, who became convinced of his sincerity and of the harmlessness of his tenets. This, however, did not prevent the continued persecution of himself and his followers, who in 1656, the year after they refused to take the oath of abjuration, had increased to such an extent that there were nearly one thousand of them in gaol. He visited Wales and Scotland, and after his marriage to the widow of Judge Fell he went to Barbadoes, Jamaica, America, Holland, and various parts of Germany. In these later wanderings he was accompanied by Penn, Barclay, Keith, and others of the more eminent of the second generation of Quaker ministers. He died 13th November 1690. Amongst his last words were: 'All is well. The seed of God reigns over all, and even over death itself.' Full of personal peculiarities, guilty of many indiscretions, he was yet an amiable and Christ-like man, with a heart full of love for his fellows, and a mind so capable and comprehensive as to enable him to institute the admirable systems of registration, poor relief, education, and self-help, which have made the sect he founded a real social power. His preaching and writings were often turgid, incoherent, and mystical. As a writer he will be always remembered by his Journal, full of heart and intellect, valuable as giving with extreme simplicity and an unflinching regard for truth a record of his own life, and of the manners and customs, especially of the poorer classes, in the stormy times in which he lived. His writings were collected and published in 3 vols. (1694-1706). In 1852 an edition in 8 vols. was published at Philadelphia, United States. The exhaustive list of his writings in Joseph Smith's Descriptive Catalogue of Friends' Books (1868) occupies no less than fifty-three pages.
See Sewell's History of the Quakers; Principal Cunningham's The Quakers; Neal's Puritans; Marsh's Life of Fox (1848); Lives by Jamey (1853), J. S. Watson (1860), Hodgkin (1896); Bickley, Fox and the Early Quakers (1884); Deacon, Fox and the Quaker Testimony (1896).