The World of Rural Dissenters, 1520-1725 (review)

Book Reviews63 Women in Seventeenth-Century Quakerism." Wilcox's painstaking organization reflects the structure ofher underlying thesis, which is that eschatology (beliefin the imminent fulfillment of history with the Second Coming of Christ) was central to early Quaker belief; and that the eschatological vision justified and encouraged the active participation ofearly Quaker women. Like their Puritan and sectarian contemporaries, the early Quakers were serious readers of the Bible, and were energized by a theology that focused on the history ofCreation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. Quakers were set apart, however, by their spiritualized interpretation of biblical scripture and Christian eschatology. Steeped as they were in biblical scriptures, they believed that the revealed Word was of a higher order; and that this revelation of Truth was the key to unlocking the true meaning of scripture. Their beliefin the Second Coming was not a literal expectation that Christ would personally descend from Heaven in a cloud ofglory. Rather, early Quakers considered the Second Coming ofChrist to be fulfilled in the outpouring oflightamong themselves, which they understood to be "the eschatological presence of Christ in the heart." Wilcox argues that early Quakers drew upon their theology, with its spiritualized eschatology, to overturn scriptural and cultural taboos against female participation. Yet the impediments of history were not entirely transcended. Reinterpretations ofPaul's stricture against women speaking in church, for example, make "women" a metaphor for "the flesh," or for the unredeemed among men and women. This revisionist exegesisjustified femaleprophecy, butit also encumbered womenwithnegative associations. Wilcox is sensitive to the radical vision of the early Quakers as well as to the diversity within the movement, and its transformation in the latter half of the seventeenth century. She argues against a traditional school of historiography, which tended to view Quaker theology as monolithic and unchanging over time. Her thesis does in fact support much of modern scholarship in the field of early Quaker history. Wilcox's important contribution to the field of Quaker scholarship is her rediscovery of theology at the heart of the movement. Harvard UniversityBarbara Ritter Dailey Baker Library The World ofRural Dissenters, 1520-1725. Ed. by Margaret Spufford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xx + 459 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, appendixes, notes, and indexes. 64Quaker History This important collection of essays focuses on communities in the Chilterns in south Buckinghamshire and the borderland of southeast Cambridgeshire. It is a welcome addition to the fields oflocal and religious history in which Margaret Spufford has already made significant contributions . Although conclusions are not always supported by sufficient evidence (e.g., that John Raven, d. 1599, was a puritan, p.24), these studies by the editor, Eric Carlson, Michael Frearson, Christopher Marsh, Derek Plumb, Peter Spufford, Tessa Watt, and others provide highly useful quantification and analysis enlivened by well-selected anecdotal materials. Readers of Quaker History will be most interested in Bill Stevenson's essays on the social integration of post-Restoration dissenters and their social and economic status, and inNesta Evans' "The Descent ofDissenters in the Chiltern Hundreds." Stevenson argues that post-Restoration Quakers were more integrated with and accepted by external communities than often thought. His evidence supports similar observations by Craig Horle (The Quaker and the English Legal System 1660-1688, 1988) and Richard Greaves (Albion 24 [1992]: 237-59). Stevenson also proposes useful correctives to the earlier work ofRichard T. Vann (Past andPresent 43 [1969]: 71-91) by arguing that the social-economic status of early Quakers was lower than Vann thought, and that their status improved, rather than declined. However, in contrasting his own results with Vann's and in concluding that dissenters came from all classes "except for the nobility and the vagrant poor" (p.357), the author might have (1) acknowledged that Vann also concluded, "Quakerism at the beginning drew adherents from all classes of society except the very highest and the very lowest." (The Social Development of English Quakerism 1655-1755, 1969, p.73), and (2) taken into account Vann's more recent demographic study of Friends (1992, with David Eversley). In addition, Stevenson and the editor confusingly juxtapose Open Baptists and General Baptists, failing to note the distinction between them and that the former constituted only a tiny minority...