Following the Restoration in 1660 until the Toleration Act of 1689, Quakers were subjected to intense persecution through legislation which fined them for non-attendance at Church of England services, for gathering at unlicensed meetings and for refusing to swear oaths or pay tithes.
Quaker meetings kept a record of all prosecutions and complaints (or 'sufferings') made against them. Below is an account of the sufferings at Wisbech and thereabouts, 1663-64. Friends are recorded as having being arrested for attending a 'peaceable meeting' or for not attending the 'steeple house' as they called the parish church. They suffered heavier penalties because their faith prohibited them from swearing oaths of any kinds even when taken before the court.
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Sufferings at Wisbech. Peeter Sandsby was sentenced to six months in prison after going to the steeple house with his hat on.
[Cambridgeshire Archives: R59/26/1/14] |
Central to the Quaker faith was, and is, the denouncement of war and violence as being counter to Christ's teachings. In 1745 during the Jacobite rebellion against George II, they made the following declaration against the appeals that were circulating for contributions towards the defence of the realm:
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'We as a People cannot be concerned either in the publick Associations for Providing Men, Horses, Arms or Promoting any other warlike Preparations...'
[Cambridgeshire Archives: R59/25/7/15]
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From early on Quakers set aside their own burial areas since they would not countenance interment in consecrated ground. It was not uncommon for burial to take place in private gardens as evidenced by an entry in the parish register of Castle Camps:
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Ferdinando Salmon, buried in the bee garden of his tenant George Bayly by his wife and sons, Quakers, 9 November 1669.
[Cambridgeshire Archives: P35/1/1] |
The Toleration Act of 1689 brought Quakers and other dissenters the right to worship freely in public.