The Social Origins of the Early Quakers

THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF THE EARLY QUAKERS By Alan Anderson* It is encouraging to those who have long desired a closer association between the methods and perspectives of sociology and history that in recent years a number of steps have been taken in the direction of a more integrated—or at least cross-fertilized—approach to the many areas of human behaviour in which they have a common interest. The clearest demonstration of this is, perhaps, the appearance of articles in, and occasionally whole issues of, journals devoted to exploring the relationship between the two.1 At a less obvious but equally important level the heightened awareness of what these disciplines can offer each other is illustrated by changes in the scope of the questions asked and the methods employed by historians and sociologists alike. On the one hand, many historians are now developing analyses which draw heavily upon (indeed are fast becoming a part of) sociological thought while some sociologists are now employing a less static, more historically-conscious, approach to their work. There are, however, losses as well as gains in this. Undoubtedly both disciplines can benefit from the injection of new ideas, fresh concepts and approaches which throw new Ught on old controversies as well as opening up new ones. There is, unfortunately, no way of guaranteeing that either historians or sociologists will borrow the most fruitful or appropriate methods and concepts from the other or that they will not be impressed by precisely that which practitioners in the other discipline find problematic or even unsatisfactory. In this respect there has been something of a tendency for historians to reproduce some of the more rigid attitudes towards methodology which have characterized many sociological orientations towards the sources and methods of that discipline. I raise these matters at the outset because they have a direct bearing upon a debate which has concerned historians of early Quakerism for the last two decades—that on the social origins of *Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Sunderland Polytechnic, Great Britain. 1. See e.g. British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 27, September 1976. 34QUAKER HISTORY the first members or adherents.2 In themselves, the issues raised in the contributions of Cole, Vann and Hurwich reveal the increasingly sociological nature of the questions historians of religious movements are now asking. Earliest accounts of the origins of Quakerism were normally written from a committed Quaker standpoint and while many of these were works of impressive scholarship , like Braithwaite's monumental two-volume history of the early years,3 it is hardly surprising that the orientation of many of these was to the spiritual and organizational aspects of the new movement. It has been only recently that wider questions have been asked about the social context in which Quakerism arose, the social composition of the first membership and the social—as distinguished from religious—ethic which the movement generated. Today, largely as a result of the work of historians such as W. A. Cole, Hugh Barbour, Richard T. Vann, or Christopher Hill,4 a more complete picture of the origins of Quakerism and its relationship to other social and religious movements is being built up. Yet areas of disagreement remain, areas in which our knowledge is incomplete or amenable to conflicting interpretations. One such unresolved dispute concerns the important matter of the social composition of the early membership, the subject of the present paper. The issue was first broached by W. A. Cole in 1955 and 1957 8 when, on the basis of a national sample drawn from 'additions' included in Quaker registers for the period before 1688, he examined regional differences in social composition. His findings were that there were few wealthy members before that date, and that the preponderance of husbandmen as opposed to yeomen, in Lancashire as elsewhere, indicates that the majority of members were 'economically pressed' and drawn from the ranks of the 'urban and rural petite bourgeoisie.'6 2.W. A. Cole, The Quakers and Politics, (unpub. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1955); W. A. Cole, "The Social Origins of the Early Friends" Journal of the Friends' Historical Society, Vol. 48, 1957; R. T. Vann, "Quakerism and the Social Structure in...