Firbank Fell anniversary meeting - Ann Newby Audland Camm

Fox's Pulpit

This is the text of a talk I gave at the 2019 annual meeting to mark the anniversary of Fox speaking on Firbank Fell in 1652. It should have been delivered near the spot known as Fox's Pulpit but because of heavy rain was relocated to Briggflatts meeting house nearby.

When does a movement begin? One reckoning dates the beginning of Quakerism from the day, June 13th 1652, when George Fox spoke to a large gathering here on Firbank Fell, but he had been gathering support and supporters before that date and continued to do so. Perhaps the setting up of an organisation spreading from Swarthmoor Hall and the fell family, who he was yet to visit, is a more effective beginning?

I want to talk today about someone who may or may not have been here that day, although her husband certainly was. Someone who lived long enough to see great changes in the movement that began in 1652 and who outlived many of its founders, including George Fox.

Ann Newby was born in Kendal in 1627. When she was twelve years old she went to London to live with an aunt for seven years before coming home to Kendal. She went into service with a well-to-do family in York but when her mistress died she returned to Kendal. She was concerned about her spiritual life and joined a group of Seekers of which John Audland was a member. They married when she was 23 and he was 20. They both thought that they had found their spiritual home until they encountered George Fox.

John Audland was here that day as he and Francis Howgill were preaching in Firbank chapel in the morning. Ann may have been part of the crowd but she certainly met Fox when he stayed in their house. He also stayed with John Camm and his wife Mabel and perhaps made as much of an impression face to face as he did preaching for three hours in the open air!

For John and Ann Audland convincement did not come easily as it overturned everything they were sure of. Ann reports of her husband,
'He was high in Notion and Profession, imagining that he had been filled with durable Riches and Wisdom; but in the Light of this Day he saw the emptiness of it all, while he wanted the Substance, Life in the eternal Word, and by the same to be sanctified throughout. Therefore under the sense of this great want, many and great were his Sighs and Groans and his Tears not a few; Days and Nights of Sorrow many an one he underwent, the Word and Power of the Lord being as a Fire revealed within him, to burn the great building, that he had been erecting and setting up of Hay, Wood and Stubble; and in this exercise I also had a share with him, and in great Lamentation I have heard him often sorrowfully say; "Ah! what have we been doing? What have we been labouring for? or what availeth our great Profession? all our building tumbles down!"'

Once they were convinced they could not remain at home but set out two by two as 'morris dancers from the North'. John Audland travelled with John Camm to Lancashire, Cheshire, Oxford, the Welsh Marches and, perhaps most notably, Bristol. Ann Audland travelled with Mabel Camm to Auckland in Durham and then to Banbury where they were imprisoned for more than a year. Ann also travelled to Launceston in Cornwall to visit George Fox in prison.

The travelling and the rough treatment they encountered took its toll. John Camm died in 1657 of consumption made worse by the rigours of his ministry. Mabel Camm died not long after. In 1664 John Audland died of a fever, leaving his wife Ann with a small daughter and heavily pregnant with a son who was born only a few days after his father's death. So of the four travellers only Ann was left. She continued on and in 1666 she married Thomas Camm, John and Mabel's son and fourteen years her junior, who had himself been convinced by Fox as a twelve year old boy in Preston Patrick chapel.

Camsgill today

They lived at Camsgill, the house that John Camm had built in 1647, and were both active in the Quaker cause. Thomas travelled extensively and was also fined more than thirty times for refusing tithe payments. Of the forty years of their marriage Thomas spent nine in prison - six years in Appleby and three in Kendal. Ann did not travel during her second marriage but continued to speak, to petition and to support her meeting as a minister and a 'mother in Israel'. She was also a 'powerful fellow-labourer' with her husband.

She might sometimes 'be grieved' when women friends spoke too hastily or unseasonably in large meetings and she might reprove them for it, but that did not mean that she was actively discouraging. She herself was careful about when to appear in public in preaching or prayer 'but when she did it was fervent, weighty and with the demonstrating of the spirit, and with power' - the same power that she had felt and expressed from her first convincement.

After the Restoration Friends concentrated more on organisation and discipline. Fox established separate womens' meetings for business to encourage women to take a full part in the Quaker movement, to be helps-meet and equal labourers in the vineyard. Ann pursued her Quaker path by encouraging women to be faithful in their attendance and ministry in these meetings.

Ann was also a fierce critic of John Wilkinson and John Story, two Westmoreland Friends who opposed womens' meetings, as well as advising Quakers not always to meet in public but to hold safer, private meetings. The two men had also refused to go to John Audland's aid in Bristol in the 1650s and Ann had neither forgotten nor forgiven that. John Story was dismissive of women Friends who defended their right to hold womens' meetings and to preach, telling them to stick to washing dishes and sending them crying home.

Ann spoke out against Wilkinson and Story whenever she could. In 1675 the Kendal Womens Meeting wrote to another womens' meeting, the Box Meeting in London, 'Our meetings are lightly looked upon and of little esteem among some who should have strengthened us' (i.e. Wilkinson and Story) and Ann Camm was a signatory of that letter.

As Ann grew older she continued on her faithful path, supporting her husband and family, encouraging and directing other women Friends and never forgetting the revelation that had come to her and so many others that day on Firbank Fell. She died in November 1705 'in a good Old Age being in her 79th year, as a Shock of Corn in Season...and was Honourably buried, many Ancient Friends of about thirteen adjacent Meetings Accompanied her to the grave.'

Ann Camm was a survivor and her spiritual journey went through changes in emphasis over time, as the movement which she had been part of starting also changed - as it would change again and is still changing. Faithfulness to the truth is what is important, but that faithfulness can mean different things at different times. There are many different paths that can lead to a vibrant Quakerism for today.

Quaker Alphabet Blog 2015 - E for Eclipse

Photograph of the solar eclipse taken by A S Eddington 29 May 1919

My Facebook feed this morning has been full of pictures of Ffriends watching, or trying to watch, the partial solar eclipse. Some found elaborate ways of not looking directly at the sun, some were frustrated by cloud cover and many remarked, as I did, on the strange quality of the fading light and the confused behaviour of birds.

Arthur Stanley Eddington 1882-1944

Thinking back to past eclipses I wondered whether Quakers had been interested in them and I found one particularly important example. In 1919 Arthur Stanley Eddington, born in Kendal in 1882, led an expedition to Principe, off the West coast of Africa in order to observe and photograph the eclipse. Eddington, a Cambridge professor,  hoped to find proof of Einstein's theory of relativity which the two men had discussed before the war. As a Quaker, Eddington was determined to show that science could be an international endeavour, free from war-time hatreds and prejudices and with this expedition he succeeded.

There is much more to say both about Eddington and about the expedition but for now I will refer you, dear reader, to an article by Matthew Stanley 'An Expedition to Heal the Wounds of War: the 1919 Eclipse Expedition and Eddington as Quaker Adventurer' which can be downloaded from academia.edu and leave you with your own thoughts about eclipses.

Quaker Alphabet Blog 2014 - W for James Wilson

James Wilson was born in 1677 in Kirby Lonsdale, Westmoreland. His father owned a 'tolerable estate' and James was brought up in the Church of England. However from his youth he was dissatisfied with what he had been taught and searched for what he called 'real religion'. He read the Bible, especially the New Testament, but eventually found what he was looking for among the Quakers.

After he was convinced James married Sarah Gardener in 1704 and they became members of Grayrigg Meeting. As well as their own numerous family they took in others including John and Samuel Fothergill who stayed with the Wilsons while attending school in Sedbergh. Later Samuel recalled that James 'discharged the office of a father to me in my minority with a father's regard and tenderness.'

When James was in her thirtieth year he became a Quaker minister and began to travel, at first locally and then farther afield. He visited Scotland and in 1714 went to Ireland. He also frequently attended Yearly Meeting in London, Wales and elsewhere.

He was not prominent nationally and wrote no journal of his travels, but he was much valued by those who knew him. His family connections with those of high rank in the district were useful to local Friends and he was of great service in settling disputes among his neighbours.

James Wilson was a good friend and neighbour as surviving letters to and from him testify. He gave good advice and encouragement, acted as a listening ear, sympathised with his friends' hardships and rejoiced with their joys. Lydia Lancaster writes to him in 1755 'with much thankfulness that I had such a friend as thee, to open my mind to and pour out my complaints...wherein thy wise counsel and tender, fatherly sympathy was a great strength to me, a poor distressed creature'. Samuel Bownas corresponded with him as a fellow minister when he was concerned about the state of Quakerism.

His old age brought much pain and infirmity but his memory and understanding did not leave him. James Wilson had outlived all his nine children and all but two of his grandchildren when he died at his home in Kendal at the end of 1769 at the age of 92.

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 33 - Q for The Quaker Bishop, Joseph Bevan Braithwaite

Painting of J B Braithwaite

Joseph Bevan Braithwaite was born in Kendal, Westmoreland on 21st June 1818, the youngest, together with his twin sister Caroline, of the nine children of Isaac Braithwaite (1781-1861) and Anna Lloyd (1788-1859). Anna's sister Mary had married Isaac's brother George and her brother Charles and his wife settled in Ambleside.  Bevan therefore grew up in a close knit community of family and fellow Quakers, went to a Quaker school in Kendal and was apprenticed to a Kendal solicitor. His parents both travelled frequently and for long periods in the ministry but there were always sisters, cousins and aunts to take care of the children.

Isaac Braithwaite

Isaac and Anna were uncompromisingly evangelical in their theology, looking to the Bible for authority rather than the Inward Light, and when they visited America in the 1820s sided with Elisha Bates in vigorously and outspokenly opposing what they saw as the 'unsound' teaching of the more mystical Elias Hicks. Hicks considered the attitudes of the Braithwaites and other English visitors to be a major cause of the separations of 1827-8 which split American Quakerism for more than a century.

At home the Braithwaite family came under the influence of their cousin Isaac Crewdson, who took an extreme position, resigned from the Society of Friends and underwent a rite of baptism.  Most of  Bevan's brothers and sisters agreed with Crewdson and, when Bevan himself went to London to complete his legal training, they encouraged him to join them. He wavered and got as far as booking an appointment for a baptism but then, urged by a letter from his father, he attended the Yearly Meeting of 1840 and changed his mind. As he wrote to his cousin, George Gillett, 'I went to the Yearly Meeting expecting it to be the last I should ever attend; but as it proceeded, one sitting after another convinced me that I had not duly appreciated the views of the great body of Friends, that there was much that was excellent and much that was sound among them.' He believed it his duty to remain and could not see where else he would go, but the rift in his family and among his friends was intensely painful to him. In the end only Bevan and his brother Charles Lloyd Braithwaite remained Quakers. Having made up his mind Bevan in time became a pillar of the Society of Friends, firm and decided in his views and wary of innovation.

Martha Gillett with her father

Bevan was call to the bar in 1843. Because he had a stammer he did not practise in court but set up a conveyancing practice. From 1840 until his death Bevan belonged to Westminster Friends' meeting in which he soon started to speak (without an impediment) and who acknowledged his gift in the ministry in 1844. In 1851 he married Martha Gillett (1823-1895), the daughter of a Quaker banker of Banbury, Oxfordshire and a recognised minister herself. They made their home in Camden in North London and raised a family of nine children. In many ways Joseph Bevan Braithwaite repeated his parents' model of parenthood - a large sheltered Quaker family with both parents travelling in the ministry. Bevan travelled extensively in England, Ireland, Europe and the Near East in the service of the Society of Friends and as a representative of the British and Foreign Bible Society. In 1865, 1876 and 1878 he visited eight Yearly Meetings in America, although following his parents' example he always stayed aloof from the Hicksites.

J B Braithwaite with cravat

Bevan worked very hard as a lawyer in order to support his growing family, but he also read widely, particularly the Church Fathers whom he could, and did, quote at great length. He wore Quaker plain dress with the addition of a distinctive stiff wide white cravat which together with his natural air of authority led some, including John Bright, to call him the Quaker Bishop. No Yearly Meeting was complete without him and for forty years he was the chief author of the Yearly Meeting Epistle.

In 1887 Bevan attended the Richmond Conference in America and played a major role in composing the Richmond Declaration, a statement of Evangelical Quaker doctrine which the delegates hoped would be acceptable to 'all the Yearly Meetings in the world.' This was not to be the case and London Yearly Meeting refused to ratify it in 1888. Younger Friends saw it as the statement of a 'creed' which they felt had no place in Quakerism.

Bevan was disappointed and hurt by this rejection. Even though in 1898 London Yearly Meeting agreed to uphold their refusal to recognise Hicksite Quakers, a decision which Bevan called in his journal 'a very great relief to me', the tide was turning. Bevan viewed with dismay developments such as the Manchester Conference in 1895 which marked the beginning of Liberal Quakerism. He battled on but privately revealed, 'I often feel my solitariness.'

William Charles Braithwaite

After the death of his wife in 1895 he was looked after devotedly by his two youngest unmarried daughters, Rachel and Catherine. When his youngest son William Charles, who had worked with him for ten years, married and moved away in 1896 Bevan felt the loss keenly and gave up his legal practice. He said 'We are so bound up in our pursuits and in each other. It is almost like cutting off the right hand.'

Joseph Bevan Braithwaite continued to engage in Quaker work and to enjoy his extensive family. He wrote many letters and kept up the journal that he had written throughout his life. Old age crept upon him gradually but he retained his clarity of mind and gentleness of disposition to the last. He died on 15th November 1905 aged eighty seven, having remained unquestioning in his devotion to the vision of Quakerism he had loved and defended since his decision at Yearly Meeting 1840, sixty five years before.

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 18 - I for Isaac Crewdson

Kendal Quaker Meeting House

Isaac Crewdson was born in Kendal in 1780, the fourth child in a family of seven sons and two daughters. His parents, Thomas Crewdson and Cicely Dillworth were both from established Quaker families and Isaac was brought up strictly according to traditional Quaker ways and doctrines.

Isaac Crewdson

Isaac went into the prosperous family cotton business and in 1803 married Elizabeth Jowitt of Leeds and settled at Ardwick, Manchester. They had two children, a son who died in infancy and a daughter Margaret. Isaac was a prominent member of Hardshaw East Monthly Meeting and was recorded as a minister by them. Isaac was therefore at the centre of a close family and Quaker network where he might have remained, prosperous and comfortable, had it not been for troubling influences coming from America and from his own convictions.

Elias Hicks

A controversy had arisen among American Quakers between traditional 'Quietist' Friends who stressed the primacy of the Inward Light and Evangelical Friends who gave more weight to the authority of the Bible and to justification by faith in Christ. One party of traditional Friends were led by Elias Hicks of New York and in  time came to be known as Hicksites, while the other party were called Orthodox Friends. In America there were serious divisions and splits between the parties.

Isaac became convinced that the evangelical position was right and he was not alone in this. However his views gradually became more extreme. Joseph John Gurney, an influential Evangelical, says that around 1832 he remembered 'telling my friend Isaac Crewdson...that he and I had started our race from opposite points, had met, and crossed on the road.'

In 1835 Isaac published a pamphlet, A Beacon to the Society of Friends. This book was a systematic refutation of writings by Elias Hicks, couched in extreme terms which only served to polarise positions. In Isaac's view scriptural authority and authority derived from the Inward Light could not co-exist and he characterised the latter, upon which most of early Quakerism was based, as 'a delusive notion'.

Manchester Mount Street meeting house

The Beacon pamphlet precipitated serious disagreement and conflict among Friends. Even some of those who took an evangelical position themselves felt, like J.J. Gurney, that Crewdson was going too far and they tried to silence him rather than answer his published arguments. Some even burned his pamphlet rather than read it themselves or allow others to see it. In Manchester many Friends were reduced to tears by the debate and quite a few saw Isaac's treatment as persecution, even if they did not agree with him. Lancashire Quarterly Meeting did not know how to proceed so they appealed to Yearly Meeting. It appointed a committee to restore unity, a difficult task which they failed to accomplish. The committee, which contained several noted evangelicals including Joseph John Gurney, would not condemn Crewdson's doctrine but counselled him for 'practical' reasons first to withdraw his pamphlet and then to suspend his ministry - both of which he refused to do.

The next step was inevitable. In Manchester in1836 Isaac Crewdson and his wife, along with some fifty others, many of them members of his family, resigned from the Society of Friends. Families were painfully divided by the controversy and people were forced to take sides. There were other resignations, amounting to around 400 in all, in meetings throughout the country which included about 100 Friends in Kendal (one third of the meeting).

Isaac Crewdson in 1840

As part of their move away from traditional Quakerism many Beaconites felt that scripture required them to undergo water-baptism. Isaac was baptised and then officiated at several baptisms undertaken privately in the homes of sympathisers. Together with his brother-in-law William Boulton he founded a separate group who called themselves 'Evangelical Friends' but were generally known by Quakers and others as Beaconites, after Isaac's pamphlet. They first met for worship on 18 September 1836 at an infant school before opening their 600-seat chapel nearby in Grosvenor Street, Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester on 17 December 1837. Here Isaac and William officiated and celebrated the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. The Evangelical Friends held a Yearly Meeting echoing the style of the official Quaker Yearly Meeting in London in 1837 and for a short while published a monthly journal The Inquirer.

Map of the Dissenters Cemetery

The controversy had a devastating effect on Isaac Crewdson's life. Because of the rifts in his own family he was obliged to retire from business and his health broke down. He died at Bowness near Lake Windermere, where he had gone hoping for a cure, on 8 May 1844 aged sixty four and was buried in the Dissenters Cemetery at Rusholme Road in Manchester (now Gartside Gardens) near his home.  The Beaconites did not flourish and their chapel, which was sparsely attended, was sold to the Baptists in 1844, the same year that Isaac died. Many of those who had resigned from the Society of Friends with Isaac moved on to join the Church of England. A substantial number joined the Plymouth Brethren and brought Quaker simplicity of worship to that movement.   


Perhaps if Isaac had not gone to such extremes in his views and expressed them so uncompromisingly or if the reaction to what he said had not degenerated into personal attack then a separation might not have taken place. After all at this time Evangelicalism was on its way to becoming the new orthodoxy for British Quakers. However it was perhaps the shattering effect of this comparatively small separation that held British Quakers back from fragmenting in the way that American Quakers did at this time.

A Quaker Alphabet. Week 1 - A for Abiah Darby

For the first post in this Quaker Alphabet of people and concepts I have chosen someone with an unusual first name beginning with A - Abiah Darby.

She was born in 1717, the youngest of the thirteen children of Samuel and Rachel Maude of whom six survived their childhood. The Maudes of Sunderland were a prosperous family who made most of their money from coal mining in Durham and Abiah grew up in comfort in Bishopwearmouth in a house called Sunniside.

When she was fourteen her father died and Abiah began to feel the stirrings of a call to the Quaker ministry although she struggled against it for years. Once she even got to the stage of standing up in Meeting but, she says, "sat down again without opening my mouth". While in this state of mind she met John Sinclair, a young man who was not of her social standing but who seemed sympathetic to her feelings. They married in 1734, against the wishes of Abiah's family, and she found that domestic cares "quenched the Holy Spirit" in her. Abiah's mother died soon after the marriage, then her daughter Rachel died of smallpox and her husband too also died, all before Abiah had reached the age of twenty-one.

Abiah moved to Kendal to live with one of her sisters and was greatly influenced by the Friends she met there. She was still struggling against her call to the ministry and was much helped by Elizabeth Shipley, a minister visiting from America, who spoke about "her own experience and long disobedience" almost as though she had been told of Abiah's state of mind.

Another local older woman Friend, Grace Chamber, took a practical interest in Abiah's future and in 1744 introduced her to another visitor to Kendal. Abraham Darby was a prosperous ironmaster from Coalbrookdale in Shropshire and a serious and sincere Quaker. He was six years older than Abiah and his first wife had died in 1740 leaving him with a daughter Hannah, then aged nine. Abiah's friends saw that having passed through sorrow as she had, Abraham could offer her understanding and would support her religious development.

Dale House, Coalbrookdale

They were married in 1746 and Abiah entered into a busy domestic life at Dale House in the heart of Coalbrookdale, giving hospitality both to visiting Friends and to Abraham's business colleagues. She gave birth to the first of her seven children, three of whom died young. Still she struggled against her call, but at last, in 1748 when she was thirty one, she tells us, "I finally did speak these words, 'My Friends, I am engaged to invite you all to get inward and taste and feel with my soul how good the Lord is', the very same words I should have opened my mouth with when fifteen and seventeen years of age."

Painting of Sunniside

From this time on, with the support of Abraham and the close-knit Quaker community in Coalbrookdale, Abiah added the duties of a Quaker minister to her other responsibilities. In 1751 her family moved to a newly-built house, named Sunniside after her childhood home, further up the hill and away from the industrial centre. [The house was demolished in 1856 but can be seen on the left in a watercolour painted by A. Tregellis which was used on the cover of Abiah Darby by Rachel Labouchere, Willam Sessions, 1988.] Abiah continued to offer hospitality to a steady stream of visitors, with many of whom she also kept up a regular correspondence. All her religious activities are recorded in the Journal which she kept throughout her married life.


Abraham died in 1763 but Abiah lived on in Coalbrookdale for another thirty years at the centre of her family and community, both Quakers and others. She was a great support and encouragement to her daughter-in-law Deborah Darby, who also became a travelling minister and found in 'Mother Darby' a kindred spirit. Abiah also encouraged -and disputed with - the local Methodist minister, John Fletcher of Madeley. She lent him books on Quaker doctrines and he did not press against her his legal right to tithes.

  Eventually Abiah's health and strength gradually declined although she remained "clear in her understanding to the last". She died in 1794 when she was seventy-seven and I feel deserves to be remembered as much by the many visitors to Coalbrookdale today as is her son Abraham's Iron Bridge.

Let me introduce you to my Friends - Grace Hall Chamber

I have been meaning for a while to begin a series on some of my Quaker Friends from the past who inspire me and I hope will inspire others. On International Women's Day I thought it appropriate to begin with a woman who, although a minister, did not travel extensively and did not write anything for publication. Most of what we know about her comes from a handful of surviving manuscript letters and from references to her in the writings of many of her contemporaries. To them she was usually known affectionately as 'dear Grace'.

Grace Hall Chamber was born in 1676 near Durham. She was the only child of James Hall and his second wife, but she also had five siblings, the children of her father and his first wife. Grace was educated at home in a prosperous Quaker family and being 'endowed with an excellent understanding' acquired considerable skill in medicine and surgery which she used throughout her life.

In 1704 she married Robert Chamber, a substantial Friend, and moved to his family home at Sedgwick near Kendal. Grace had an extensive acquaintance among all classes of society in her local community and concerned herself with the lives and happiness of all her friends, not only Quakers. In 1711 she was recognised as having a gift of ministry among Friends although she did not speak frequently or at length. Her travel in the ministry was mainly local and in the company of her husband. There is no record that Grace and Robert had any children of their own, but Grace acted as a mother, nurse and friend to all who needed her, often caring for them in her own home.

Grace's letters give two glimpses of her caring ministry. In 1737 she writes an account for his friends of the death in her house from smallpox of Charles Barnett, a travelling minister far from home. She writes - 'He had not one minute of perfect ease since he came to us so that we had very little discourse with him upon any account but his illness and what might be of service and most suitable for him, but the first morning after he found he was not able to travel he named his wife, as she little knew how he was and said, "I am out of all their reach. I am two hundred miles from my habitation." And I answered, "Think thyself at home. We will do whatever we can for thee. Thou shalt want for nothing we either have or can get to do thee good."' The letter continues with a description of the funeral and, on a practical note, an account of the effects of the deceased and of the memoranda Grace had written at his dictation.

In 1743 Grace writes about the care she is giving to Fanny Henshaw who she took into her home for more than a month. Fanny was brought up in the Church of England but became a Quaker as a young woman, much to the dismay of her family and friends. Very soon after her convincement - perhaps too soon - she began to travel in the ministry and became exhausted both physically and mentally.

Grace writes of Fanny's situation - 'She has been quite overdone, both body and spirits, and the fever coming upon her in that low condition was beyond what her constitution could undergo without being borne down below measure, which is not easily recruited, there being need of both inward and outward helps. As divine providence has provided both for our souls and bodies so I conclude we ought to receive both in as much faith and thankfulness as possible we can.' Grace gave her rest, counsel and the recommended treatment of salt and fresh water baths until she recovered and reflects - 'May we above all things look to the giver of all our good enjoyments in all our circumstances, whether it being plenty or poverty, he knows best what is good for us and we may soon learn by experience both how to order ourselves and advise others - this is what I am and have often been concerned for in secret.'

In 1753, when they had been married for almost fifty years, Robert Chamber died. Grace characterised Robert as 'one of the best of husbands' but acknowledged that her ministry had always to take account of his needs. As she said, 'He was very unwilling to want me, but I think he made that up, as much as any man in his circumstance could have done, in letting his house be free and open to sick and lame, poor and rich. If I were but there it was mostly well.'

In her widowhood Grace travelled further afield in the ministry, often with her lifelong friend Lydia Lancaster. In 1760 they went on a journey to Bath, Bristol and London. Contemporaries wondered at their taking on so much when so advanced in years but described them both as 'green in old age'. On her return Grace became more infirm, finding it difficult to get to even local Quaker meetings. She died, aged 85, at Sedgwick and was buried in the Friends burial ground at Preston Patrick.