Quakers in Colonial Virginia

na BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL SOCIETY. QUAKERS IN COLONIAL VIRGINIA. " During the greater part of the Colonial period, there were in Virginia but few dissenters from the Church of England, with the exception of the Quakers—who had all the virtues of their sect, but, save in certain customs peculiar to them, they seem to have lived very much like their neighbors. In the seventeenth century they were subjected to harsh persecution, and some of them were whipped,imprisoned or banished, yet as long this lasted they increased and prospered. There was happily a cessation of the persecution after James II's declaration¦permitting liberty of conscience, which was proclaimed in Virginia , and ordered to be ' celebrated with beate of Drum and the Firing of ye Great Gunns, and with all the Joyfujness that this •Collony is capable to Express.' "' " During most of the eighteenth century the Quakers were permitted to quietly attend their meeting houses, but, like all dissenters , were taxed for the support of the Established Church. Though they far outnumbered any other dissenting body in the Colony during most of the period, they were far too few to produce any noticeable effect on the manners and customs of the •general population. . . . " Richard Russell, a Quaker of Lower Norfolk, . . . about 1670 left part of his estate for the education of children of the -poor in his neighborhood." From " Colonial Virginia, Its People and Customs," by Mary Newton Stannard. J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, Ï9I7, PP- 338, 339; 268. [Note.—This Richard Russell was the Friend at whose house on "" May 3, 1663, twelve persons were arrested," and he " fined £100 for entertaining and permitting the meeting, half of which went to the informer , William Hill, High Shreive." " On " the 12th of November twenty-two persons called Quakers were arrested at Richard Russell's house where John Porter, Junior, was speaking. The preachers were 'fined 500 pounds of tobacco, and each attender 200 pounds." Cited in R. M. Jones, " Quakers in American Colonies," pp. 274, 275.] ...