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Friends, eooist7 of THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 894
and Hubberthorn, and William Ames, officers in the army; Anthony Pearson and John Crook, justices of the peace. The courtly and cultured William Penn, and Robert Barclay (qq.v.), a member of a noble family in Scotland, a near relative of the Stuart kings, and a man of thorough classical and patristic scholarship, joined the society about twenty years after its formation. In 1680 the number of Friends in Great Britain was not less than 66,000.
America was first visited by Friends in 1656, when Mary Fisher and Anne Austin arrived in Boston from Barbados, to which island they, had gone to preach the Gospel the preceding year.
~ moua opinions," and were kept in close Colonies. confinement, at first on the vessel, and
afterward in jail. Their books were burned by the common executioner, and even their persons were searched to discover signs of witchcraft. They were then sent back to Barbados. In 1660 this same Mary Fisher held an interview with Sultan Mahomet IV., at Adrianople, where he was then encamped with his army. Two days after the banishment of the first Friends from Boston, a vessel having on board eight other Friends arrived from London. They were at once imPrisoned, and, eleven weeks afterward, were sent to England. But, nothing daunted, others of the same faith continued to arrive in New England, to suffer scourging, imprisonment, banishment, and four of their number (William Robinson and Mar maduke Stevenson in 1659, Maiy Dyer in 1660, and William Leddra in 1661), death by the gallows. Monthly meetings had been established in New England before 1660, and in 1661 a yearly meeting in Rhode Island, which has been continued regularly to the present date. New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas were visited very early; and, although there was much persecution, flourishing communities of Friends sprang up. George Fox himself made an extended journey in America in 1671-73. But the most important event in the early history of the society on this continent was the settlement of Pennsylvania by William Penn and a large number of his brethren in faith, beginning in 1682. In 1690 there were at least 10,000 Friends in the American Colonies, and in 1702,20,000 in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. For an account of the schism in America, 1692 and later, see KEITH, GEORGE.
While no Friends in England suffered immediate martyrdom, the sum of their persecution was very great. Between 1650 and 1689 14,000 of them were fined and imprisoned; and 369, inclu-
ding the majority of the first preach~- err, died in jail, " not to mention cruel
mockings, buffetings, scourgings, and afflictions inn%nmerable." Never were persecutions borne in a more heroic spirit of endurance, or in a more Christian spirit of forgiveness. Never, too, were the inalienable rights of conscience more bravely asserted, and the privileges of Englishmen more boldly claimed. " The trials of the Friends, and especially that of John Crook in 1662,
and that of William Penn and William Mead in 1670. at the Old Bailey, will forever remain as noble monuments of their resistance to the arbitrary proceedings of the courts of judicature at that time, and the violent infringement of the privilege of jury." Soon after the Revolution of 1688, the persecution ceased on both sides of the Atlantic.
When the martyr age had passed, the society became less aggressive, and made fewer converts to its views; but it devoted itself to the quiet 6. Later De- practise of the Christian virtues, and
The Society in early days was an association of sympathetic believers without any adopted written creed or list of members. In time birthright membership was introduced and this created a non-convinced element. About the middle of the eighteenth century such varied views e- "iff°ra"- and practises prevailed that on both
Cos. The sides of the ocean disciplinary regqla- ~o~t° tions were adopted, and these in time Separation.came to be looked upon as an essential part of original Quakerism. Men of liberal views and varying habits were lost. This rigidity lasted well into the nineteenth century, but in 1827 came the great separation. The differences had been smoldering for years. The central figure was Elias Hicks (q.v.), an eloquent minister from Long Island. From him one body was called Hieksite while the other was known as Orthodox, though neither side formally adopted the title. The former contained many Unitarians, but their basis was the non-necessity of the beliefs commonly known as Orthodox. In many cases there was an extension of the belief of the early Friends as to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, so as to repudiate the common Orthodox conceptions of the deity and atonement of Christ and the inspiration of the Scriptures. The other body held to these, as taught by their ancestors, but held to them with such disciplinary rigidity that sympathetic believers, who cared more for freedom of opinion than for any particular belief were driven into the opposite branch. The formal separation began in Philadelphia in 1827 and extended to the yearly meetings of New York, Baltimore, Ohio and Indiana. In the three eastern yearly meetings the Hicksites were a large majority. .In London, Dub-