overcome; my troubles, my sorrows and my temptations were so great that I thought many times I should have despaired, I was so tempted. But when Christ opened to me how He was tempted by the same devil, and overcame him and bruised his head, and that through Him, and His power, light, grace and spirit, I should overcome also, I had confidence in Him; so He it was that opened to me, when I was shut up and had no hope nor faith. Christ, who had enlightened me, gave me His light to believe in; He gave me hope which He himself revealed in me; and He gave me His spirit and grace, which I found sufficient in the deeps and in weakness.” In 1647 he records that at a time when all outward help had failed “I heard a voice which said, ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.’ And when I heard it my heart did leap for joy.” In the same year he first openly declared his message in the neighbourhood of Dukinfield and Manchester (see Friends, Society of).
In 1649, as he was walking towards Nottingham, he heard the bell of the “steeple house” of the city, and was admonished by an inward voice to go forward and cry against the great idol and the worshippers in it. Entering the church he found the preacher engaged in expounding the words, “We have also a more sure word of prophecy,” from which the ordinary Protestant doctrine of the supreme authority of Scripture was being enforced in a manner which appeared to Fox so defective or erroneous as to call for his immediate and most energetic protest. Lifting up his voice against the preacher’s doctrine, he declared that it is not by the Scripture alone, but by the divine light by which the Scriptures were given, that doctrines ought to be judged. He was carried off to prison, where he was detained for some time, and from which he was released only by the favour of the sheriff, whose sympathies he had succeeded in enlisting. In 1650 he was imprisoned for about a year at Derby on a charge of blasphemy. On his release, overwrought and weakened by six months spent “in the common gaol and dungeon,” he performed what was almost the only and certainly the most pronounced act of his life which had the appearance of wild fanaticism. Through the streets of Lichfield, on market day, he walked barefoot, crying, “Woe to the bloody city of Lichfield.” His own explanation of the act, connecting it with the martyrdom of a thousand Christians in the time of Diocletian, is not convincing. His proceeding was probably due to a horror of the city arising from a subconscious memory of what he must have heard in childhood from his mother (“of the stock of the martyrs”) concerning a martyr, a woman, burnt in the reign of Mary at Lichfield, who had been taken thither from Mancetter, a village two miles from his home in which he had worked as a journeyman shoemaker (see The Martyrs Glover and Lewis of Mancetter, by the Rev. B. Richings). He must also have heard of the burning of Edward Wightman in the same city in 1612, the last person burned for heresy in England.
It would be here out of place to follow with any minuteness the details of his subsequent imprisonments, such as that at Carlisle in 1653; London 1654; Launceston 1656; Lancaster 1660, and again in 1663, whence he was taken to Scarborough in 1665; and Worcester 1673. During these terms of imprisonment his pen was not idle, as is amply shown by the very numerous letters, pastorals and exhortations which have been preserved; while during his intervals of liberty he was unwearied in the work of “declaring truth” in all parts of the country. In 1669 he married Margaret, widow of Judge Fell, of Swarthmoor, near Ulverston, who, with her family, had been among his earliest converts. In 1671 he visited Barbados, Jamaica, and the American continent, and shortly after his return in 1673 he was, as has been already noted, apprehended in Worcestershire for attending meetings that were forbidden by the law. At Worcester he suffered a captivity of nearly fourteen months. In 1677 he visited Holland along with Barclay, Penn and seven others; and this visit he repeated (with five others) in 1684. The later years of his life were spent mostly in London, where he continued to speak in public, comparatively unmolested, until within a few days of his death, which took place on the 13th of January 1691 (1690 O.S.).
William Penn has left on record an account of Fox from personal knowledge—a Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People called Quakers, written as a preface to Fox’s Journal. Although a man of large size and great bodily strength, he was “very temperate, eating little and sleeping less.” He was a man of strong personality, of measured utterance, “civil” (says Penn) “beyond all forms of breeding.” From his Journal we gather that he had piercing eyes and a very loud voice, and wore good clothes. Unlike the Roundheads, he wore his hair long. Even before his marriage with Margaret Fell he seems to have been fairly well off; he does not appear to have worked for a living after he was nineteen, and yet he had a horse, and speaks of having money to give to those who were in need. He had much practical common-sense, and keen sympathy for all who were in distress and for animals. The mere fact that he was able to attract to himself so considerable a body of respectable followers, including such men as Ellwood, Barclay, Penington and Penn, is sufficient to prove that he possessed in a very eminent degree the power of conviction, persuasion, and moral ascendancy; while of his personal uprightness, single-mindedness and sincerity there can be no question.
The writings of Fox are enumerated in Joseph Smith’s Catalogue of Friends’ Books. The Journal is especially interesting; of it Sir James Mackintosh has said that “it is one of the most extraordinary and instructive narratives in the world, which no reader of competent judgment can peruse without revering the virtue of the writer.” The Journal was originally published in London in 1694; the edition known as the Bicentenary Edition, with notes biographical and historical (reprint of 1901 or later), will be found the most useful in practice. An exact transcript of the Journal has been issued by the Cambridge University Press. A Life of George Fox, by Dr Thomas Hodgkin; The Fells of Swarthmoor Hall, by Maria Webb; and The Life and Character of George Fox, by John Stephenson Rowntree, are valuable. For a mention of other works, and for details of the principles and history of the Society of Friends, together with some further information about Fox, see the article Friends, Society of. (A. N. B.)
FOX, RICHARD (c. 1448–1528), successively bishop of Exeter,
Bath and Wells, Durham, and Winchester, lord privy seal, and
founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was born about 1448
at Ropesley near Grantham, Lincolnshire. His parents belonged
to the yeoman class, and there is some obscurity about Fox’s
early career. It is not known at what school he was educated,
nor at what college, though the presumption is in favour of
Magdalen, Oxford, whence he drew so many members of his
subsequent foundation, Corpus Christi. He also appears to
have studied at Cambridge, but nothing definite is known of
the first thirty-five years of his career. In 1484 he was in Paris,
whether merely for the sake of learning or because he had
rendered himself obnoxious to Richard III. is a matter of speculation.
At any rate he was brought into contact with the earl of
Richmond, who was then beginning his quest for the English
throne, and was taken into his service. In January 1485 Richard
intervened to prevent Fox’s appointment to the vicarage of
Stepney on the ground that he was keeping company with the
“great rebel, Henry ap Tuddor.”
The important offices conferred on Fox immediately after the battle of Bosworth imply that he had already seen more extensive political service than can be traced in records. Doubtless Henry VII. had every reason to reward his companions in exile, and to rule like Ferdinand of Aragon by means of lawyers and churchmen rather than trust nobles like those who had made the Wars of the Roses. But without an intimate knowledge of Fox’s political experience and capacity he would hardly have made him his principal secretary, and soon afterwards lord privy seal and bishop of Exeter (1487). The ecclesiastical preferment was merely intended to provide a salary not at Henry’s expense; for Fox never saw either Exeter or the diocese of Bath and Wells to which he was translated in 1492. His activity was confined to political and especially diplomatic channels; so long as Morton lived, Fox was his subordinate, but after the archbishop’s death he was second to none in Henry’s confidence, and he had an important share in all the diplomatic
