Quakers in North Yorkshire in the Nineteenth Century


The Quakers or “Society of Friends” was a non conformist group founded by George Fox a Leicestershire Weaver in 1647. They rejected formal church services and sacraments and stressed the “inner voice of God speaking to the soul”. The Quakers were persecuted until the 1689 Act of Toleration allowed them to worship in public. In rural areas of Lancashire and Yorkshire membership was strong and simple meeting houses were constructed. George Fox visited Yorkshire in 1651 and numbers increased in the County to approximately fifteen thousand, mostly localised in areas near to the coast. Fox was vigorously opposed and suffered beatings as a result. In Helmsley and Bilsdale there is no evidence that George Fox preached but many would hear about his preaching. The Quaker Act of 1662 put many Quakers into prison, amid extensive violence but the movement used this to its advantage- appealing to the sense of reason in human beings. After the Declaration of Indulgence in 1687 many Quakers met in the homes of members and the Abbot House in Bilsdale was used as a meeting place from 1705.

Some Quakers did not wish to be buried in the churchyards of their own parish churches and eventually separate meeting houses with burial grounds were built. In Bilsdale Quakers from outside the area used the meeting house that was built at Laskill. The building was used for one hundred and fifty years but by 1880 there was only one family still involved with the Quakers. This caused the owner of the estate, the Earl of Feversham to claim that the tenancy agreement was between him and that family and he wished to take back possession of the building. A vigorous dispute followed between the Society of Friends and Lord Feversham. This was widely reported in the newspapers of the time including papers not local to the area. The Quakers won the argument and the building was given back to them. By 1919 it was being shared between the Methodists and the Quakers. This arrangement continued until the 1950s when regular services for either denomination ceased and the money was transferred to the local Methodist Chapel in Fangdale Beck (within Bilsdale).

How tolerant are we in the Church today of different expressions of a common faith?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Oxford Movement and The Gorham Judgment of 1850

  The Privy Council, a secular Court, announced a decision on the case of the Reverend George Gorham in 1850. The Anglican B ishop of Exeter Henry Phillpotts had refused to allow him to become vicar of St. Peter's in Bramford Speke, Devon because of Gorham's theology of Baptism, which Philpotts regarded as not conform ing to the doctrine of the Church of England. Reverend Gorham held that Baptism was not sacramentally effective and that an adult decision to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour was necessary. Bishop Phillpotts, however, was a High Church Anglican who could not accept what he regarded as a denial of Article XXVII of the Thirty-Nine Articles: Baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference whereby Christians are discerned from other that be not christened, but is also a sign of regeneration or new birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive baptism rightly are grafted into the Church; the promises of the forgiveness of sin, and o...
Read more

The Gothic Revival in the nineteenth century: Early work by A.W.N. Pugin

  As a young man Augustus Pugin converted to Roman Catholicism and in 1836 published “Contrasts” in which he compares architecture and interior furnishings in Protestant and Roman Catholic settings. One of his drawings illustrates “a faithful picture of Protestant desecration and neglect” and features a defaced altar screen, below which stands an altar table that Pugin describes as a “cheap and ugly table”. In contrast a sketch of an altar and associated furnishings in a Roman Catholic setting is described as “more suited to a fashionable boudoir that to an altar for sacrifice.” Pugin’s aim was to recapture the Gothic style in the buildings and furnishings he designed. An early commission was Scarisbrick Hall, close to Ormskirk in Lancashire. Charles Scarisbrick initially wanted a garden seat and chimney piece, but the young and enthusiastic Pugin set about trying to rebuild the entire property. Pugin produced for Scarisbrick a number of rooms central to the house: the Great...
Read more

A.W.N. Pugin “Improving the taste of young England”

Image
  On September 1 st 1846 the opening of St. Giles’ Church Cheadle took place after five years of building and interior design work by Pugin. The Earl of Shrewsbury whose money had largely funded the project was delighted. He thought it would “improve the taste of young England” and could often be found showing people around. George Gilbert Scott was impressed and the Earl of Shrewsbury commented about his reaction “ the stencilling absolutely made the water run down both sides of his mouth”. St. Giles Church was designed by Pugin to be entirely English in style and was symmetrical. This style no longer reflected his thinking at the time but it was an example of what became known as “Puginism”. The Church cost over thirty thousand pounds and was a full blown work of high romantic art. In it Pugin’s own religious and aesthetic ideals were equally fulfilled. Many notable guests attended the consecration including John Henry Newman, a recent convert from the Anglican to the Rom...
Read more