Quaker Women

Elizabeth Hooton - convinced 1647

Convinced by Geo Fox who was travelling in Nottinghamshire. She was a member of a remnant of a body of Baptists. She was a married woman, middle aged and in comfortable circumstances. She first met George Fox in Mansfield. In 1649 she left husband and children at home to become the first woman-preacher. She died while travelling in the Ministry with Geo Fox & others in Jamaica in 1658.

"On the 2d of the month called April (1660), Elizabeth Hooton, passing quietly on the Road, was met by one Jackson, Priest of Selston, who abused her, beat her with many Blows, knockt her down, and afterward put her into the Water."
from Besse's Sufferings of the People called Quakers

Of her audience with the King she wrote:
"My goeing to London hath not beene for my owne ends, but in obedience to the will of God, for it was layed before me when I were on the sea, and in great danger of my life, that I should goe befoe the King, to witnesse for God, whether he would hear or noe, and to lay downe my life as I did at Boston if it bee required. And the Lord hath given me peace in my Journey, and God hath soe ordered that the takeing away of my Cattle hath beene very serviceable, for by that meanes have I had great priviledge to speake to the faces of the great men. "

Quaker both men and women were given to individual public demonstration by walking as by a sign. They sometimes took all their clothes off and walked naked and sometimes in sack cloth and ashes:
"And it came upon me to gett a coat of sackecloath, and it was plaine to me how I should have it. So we made that coat, And the next morning, I were moved to goe amongs them again at Whitehall, in sackcloath and ashes. And the people was much strucken both men and women was struken into silence."