Non-conformity in Christianity was, as the name implies, all about not conforming to the norm. For the people of England and Wales “the norm” was the Church of England, established in 1534 during the reign of Henry VIII.

Non-conformism came to the fore during the years of the Civil War and subsequent Commonwealth, a period in which the nation executed its king and cemented the concept of the supremacy of Parliament.  Following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the Act of Uniformity of 1662, which saw many dissenting clergy formally removed from the Church of England, the term non-conformist entered common use. 

In later years “non-conformist” was the umbrella name applied to Methodists (Calvinist and Wesleyan), Baptists, Quakers and other sects that were not the Church of England.

The January Local History hour explored this subject in two very different approaches to the subject of non-conformity. It was an excellent session – we heard fascinating stories, learnt new facts and got some great tips on researching non-conformity in a locality. 

What happens when a non-conformist (in this instance a Quaker, John Farmer) stops conforming with the branch of non-conformity he thought to follow?  In an exciting journey which took the audience to 17/18th century England, Scotland, Ireland, America and the Caribbean, this was a question explored by the first speaker Julie Miller. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources she explored the tempestuous life of Farmer who was a member of the Essex Quaker community. He married a young Quaker widow, Mary Fulbigg, a woman who, Farmer said, had “a gift of prophesy or preaching given her by ye Lord before she was my wife”. John Farmer and his wife both felt called to travel in the name of their religion, and chapel records and Farmer’s journal record both Mary’s expeditions and his own.  Farmer’s problematic personality (his “indiscreet zeal”) which regularly set him at odds with the Quaker community may have been another factor in his departure from his home town of Saffron Walden.

In America and the Caribbean Farmer disapproved strongly of those Quakers who kept slaves, and those he claimed had succumbed to a dissolute life – in Anguilla he found that they had “ fallen into drunkenness and sin caused by Rum” ; slave owners often justified their actions by claiming to bring enlightenment to their slaves, and being “good masters” and the Quakers were involved in trades that made slave owning expedient (such as cocoa production) but for Farmer there was no justification for one man owning another. Please do read Julie’s excellent blogs on the Essex Record Office website on Farmer’s life and times: http://www.essexrecordofficeblog.co.uk/john-farmer-an-essex-quaker-in-the-new-world/

Julie’s second subject, Benjamin Lay (1682-1789), was equally fascinating - another English Quaker, who developed abolitionist principles as a result of the treatment he witnessed of slaves in Barbados. He too went to America where he too became unpopular in the Quaker community because of his strident and very public opposition to slavery. His book All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates and his public protests (which included the abduction of a child, to demonstrate the pain caused to slaves whose families were arbitrarily torn apart) failed to win him friends in the Quaker community. Lay described himself as “Little Benjamin” – he was only just over four feet tall, and must surely have suffered from his hunchback and deformed chest. He opposed exploitation of other beings to the extent that he ate no animal flesh, and insisted on making all his own clothes. His wife, of similarly small stature, predeceased him by many years whereupon he took up residence in a cave near Abington, Pennsylvania, where he farmed, maintained his extensive library and wrote the tracts which made him unpopular. Just before Lay’s death in 1759 the Quaker community decided that slave-owning was indeed wrong and ended support for the practice. This account comprised a wonderful story and another one that I am keen to follow up!

Our second speaker Pam Smith, showed the depth and breadth of results from researching one place in detail. Her place is Rillington, a village formerly in the East Riding of Yorkshire (and now in North Yorkshire) between York and Scarborough. The village formed its local history society in 2013. Pam led us into her subject by recalling community open days held by the society, and visitors’ affectionate memories of Methodist Sunday School outings.  

Rillington’s population grew from 400 in 1771 to 1228 in the 1851 population census, one reason being the arrival of the railway, which accelerated not only the movement of people around the country, but also the ideas they espoused.  As the population increased the number of chapels in Rillington grew. Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, Quakers all had their distinctive beliefs within the basic tenets of Christianity, and the chapel often determined not only one’s religious beliefs but informed one’s politics, one’s habits (many non-conformists espoused Temperance) and determined one’s place in the community, both in the sense of “belonging” and “exclusion”.  I am reminded of an old joke about a non-conformist stranded on a desert island. After many years a rescue party discovered him and found that he had built himself a rudimentary dwelling, and two simple chapels. “Why two?” they naturally enquired. “Ah” he replied, “that one there is the chapel I don’t attend.”

Chapels, unlike the Church of England, did not receive “state funding” so it tended to fall to the worshippers themselves to raise the money to build their chapels, often engendering a great sense of purpose and pride within the congregation. Pam did point out however, that the Quakers were something of an exception to this creation of the fabric of memory: it can be difficult to find monuments to the Quakers within modern communities because of their plain meeting houses, and their habit of burying without ceremony or grave-markers - as local historians how often we rely on the record of the graveyard for our information about our predecessors!   

In addition to those mentioned in this post please also see below for useful related resources:

Anne Whiteman (ed.), The Compton Census of 1676 – A Critical Edition (1986) [It records that Rillington cum Scampston had a population of 150, no recusants and 8 other dissenters]

Marcus Rediker, The Fearless Benjamin Lay: the Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist (2017)

Andrew Bradstock, Radical Religion in Cromwell’s England (2011)

Stuart A. Raymond, Tracing Your Nonconformist Ancestors (2017)

Quaker Family History Society –  for family historians with Quaker ancestors from the British Isles (qfhs.co.uk)

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