Portal:Biography/Selected article/June 17

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George Fox (July 1624 – 13 January 1691) was an English Dissenter and a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers.

He was the son of a weaver from rural England, and was apprenticed to a cobbler. Living in a time of great social upheaval, he rebelled against the religious and political consensus by proposing an unusual and uncompromising approach to the Christian faith. Abandoning his trade as a shoemaker, he toured Britain as a dissenting preacher, for which he was often persecuted by the authorities who disapproved of his beliefs.

He married the widow of one of his wealthier supporters, Margaret Fell, who was also a leading Friend. His ministry expanded and he undertook tours of North America, and the Low Countries, between which he was imprisoned for over a year. He spent the final decade of his life working in London to organize the expanding Quaker movement. (Read more...)