The first Quaker?
The report of the Quaker Universalist Conference by Daniel Clarke Flynn (4 July) refers to a presentation given there by our Friend from Woodbrooke Rhiannon Grant: ‘She cited many women pioneers such as Elizabeth Hooton, the first woman to be convinced by the preaching of George Fox.’ This has been the received wisdom of three centuries of Quaker historians, but it was not really like that.
George Fox was on his travels – failing to find any preachers or believers who could satisfy his searching – when he first met Elizabeth Hooton, in 1647. In his Journal, Fox describes her as ‘a very tender woman’, by which he refers to her spiritual sensitivity (in other ways she was a bold, assertive woman, causing annoyance to the local authorities).
As Fox continued his travels he started to record several experiences of the infinite love of God and had ‘openings’ of truth. This is a new, changed, George Fox. What is clear from his narrative is that his meeting with Elizabeth Hooton was crucial. It took a few months for him to make the new understandings his own, but very soon he was able to start sharing them widely with those he met.
This sequence of events is substantiated by what he wrote in 1672, in testimony concerning Elizabeth Hooton, who had just died: ‘She was a serious, upright-hearted woman to the Lord and received his truth several years before we were called Quakers.’
He goes on to say: ‘She was convinced at Skegby in Nottinghamshire and held meetings at her house where the Lord by his power wrought many miracles… confirming people of the Truth which she there received about 1646, and fulfilled her ministry and finished her testimony about 1672.’
He almost spells it out: Hooten was convinced a year before he met her. His own narrative suggests that she was responsible for convincing him.
Three centuries of Quaker historians have managed to avoid giving Elizabeth Hooton the honour she deserves. To all intents and purposes she was the first Quaker, and did us the great favour of convincing George Fox, in 1647, before he had gotten his head together and started preaching.
So thank you to Rhiannon Grant for naming Elizabeth Hooton, but I hope Friends will get to learn more about, and give more credit to, this woman, without whom the Quaker movement might never have gotten underway.
Barney Smith
Age of reason
With reference to younger people being given the right to vote, I would say that our Friend Ilana Jones, aged fifteen, who wrote the poem ‘How to hold a gun’ (18 July), has certainly demonstrated her maturity in being able to vote sensibly.
Peter Schweiger
