Seventeenth-century Quaker preachers who roamed Britain and its North American colonies were frequently arrested and prosecuted under vagrancy laws rather than religious statutes. This project examines how secular laws were used—and potentially misused—to persecute a radical religious minority across the British Atlantic world between 1650 and 1750. Much of what historians know about early Quaker encounters with the law comes from the Quakers' own writings. By combining those accounts with legal records held at the Huntington Library, the researcher aims to reconstruct these interactions from multiple perspectives, including a comparative look at how other dissenters fared. This matters because it addresses a gap in understanding why civil laws were applied to religious groups, and whether Quaker persecution was distinctive. The research is fundamentally historical and curiosity-driven. If successful, it could reshape how scholars understand the relationship between secular legal systems and religious dissent in the early modern period, with implications for how we think about legal treatment of minority groups more broadly.
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This project will explore interactions between early Quakers and the law in the British Atlantic World. The Quakers were a radical religious group that emerged in Britain in the mid-seventeenth century. Their missionary activities, such as itinerant preaching, led to their persecution by the local authorities they encountered, including for vagrancy. My PhD thesis explores the persecution of early Quakers as vagrants across the British Atlantic. I am investigating the use and potential misuse of laws to persecute this movement, and why secular laws were applied to religious minorities. The legal experiences of dissenters are therefore central to my wider research. Much of what we know about early Quaker interactions with the law comes from their own writings, of which the Huntington Library holds a rich collection. The opportunity to examine this material alongside the extensive collection of early modern legal records, makes the Huntington the ideal institution to reconstruct Quaker legal experiences in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Combining these sources will allow me to consider the legal treatment of Quakers from multiple perspectives, providing a more holistic approach than previous studies. This also means I will explore the legal experience of other dissenters through a comparative study, enabling me to evaluate the distinctive character of Quaker persecution. The particular strengths in legal as well as Quaker history relating to both sides of the Atlantic at the Huntington makes it a unique repository to conduct this transatlantic project and more fully explore the colonial dimensions of my research.
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