The Quakers’ American Proprietaries
In the late seventeenth century, writes Richard Simmons, the Quakers hoped to found in Pennsylvania and elsewhere a radical Christian commonwealth.
The rise, growth and consolidation of the Society of Friends after 1660 is one of the most remarkable events of the Restoration period. Unlike most of the other radical sects of the Interregnum, the Quakers survived and prospered. At the price of some internal schism, they were organized to an accommodation with the world and, under persecution and harassment, their strength waxed rather than waned. A network of Quaker meetings existed by 1676, giving an effective national chain of direction and communication.
One manifestation of Quaker expansion was the establishment of transatlantic connexions. Individual Quaker missionaries had journeyed to North America and the West Indies even before the Restoration; three Quakers had been executed in Boston by 1660.
In 1671 the greatest of the Quakers embarked on his voyage to the new world. Among those who saw George Fox off at Gravesend was William Penn. Fox returned two years later; his epistles from America must have been read at many Friends’ meetings. The significance of his journey for the subsequent development of colonizing schemes among Quakers cannot be precisely stated.
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