Esther Biddle

The Execution of Charles I, 1649

Esther (or Hester) Biddle was born around 1629 and brought up in Oxford where she received a good education. She was a staunch Royalist and loyal to the Church of England. As a young woman she came to London where, she said, she sought satisfaction 'evening, morning and noonday, in the
Common Prayer' and when only one church was left open in the City she went to it. She adds, 'when their books were burned I stood for them and my heart was wholly joined to them, and when the King's head was taken off my heart and soul was burdened that I was weary of my life.'

In 1654 her life was changed when she met Francis Howgill and was convinced by him of the truth of Quakerism. In 1656 she began to travel in the ministry and to write in order to champion her new cause. She published several controversial works, some partly in verse.

Charles II c.1653

In 1656 Esther was arrested at Banbury and also at Launceston with John Stubbs and William Ames, who later went with her to Holland. In that year she also visited Newfoundland and in 1657 went to Barbados. On her return Esther had a vision of the king's restoration and went to Breda to tell Charles about it although George Fox and others had cautioned her against this course. Esther always followed her own line, which did not make her popular among Friends. During the late 1650s she spent some time in Holland and was described by her critics as a thorn in the side of Dutch as well as of English Quakers.

The Great Fire of London.

After her convincement Esther married Thomas Biddle who was also an active Friend. He was a shoemaker and seems to have had a prosperous business in London at Old Change employing a number of Quaker apprentices. This business prospered until Old Change was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. The family then moved south of the river but evidently never recovered their former prosperity. Shortly after Thomas's death in 1682 Esther became a pensioner of Peel Meeting and remained so for the rest of her life, at one time living in one of the rooms behind the meeting house given over to 'poor widows'. The only one of Thomas and Esther's four sons to reach adulthood was Benjamin. He was apprenticed first to his father, but after Thomas's death was re-apprenticed by Peel Meeting out of a bequest left for apprenticing sons of 'poor Friends'.

Throughout her life Esther spoke and wrote as she felt called to do without considering the consequences and was imprisoned at least fourteen times. As a widow, in spite of her poverty, Esther still managed to travel in the ministry, visiting both Scotland and Ireland during those years.

Mary II

Perhaps her most famous exploit occurred in 1694 towards the end of her life. Esther was most concerned about the war between England and France and determined, against the advice of Friends, to do something about it. She went first to Queen Mary, complained that the war with its suffering was a grief to her heart as a woman and a Christian, and asked the Queen to endeavour to end it. She then asked leave to go to France to speak to the French king on the same subject. Eventually Esther obtained a pass from the Queen's Secretary and set out. After various difficulties she came to Versailles and applied to the exiled James II, who she had met before and delivered to him the letter she had written to Louis XIV. James gave it to the Duke of Orleans who promised to pass it on to the King, but Esther was not satisfied and insisted on speaking to the King herself. 'Am I permitted to speak to the King of Kings, and may I not speak with men?' she said.

Louis XIV

When he heard about this Louis admitted Esther to his presence. She implored the King to make his peace with God and with the nations he was at war with and put a stop to 'such an overflowing and Rivulet of Blood that was shed.' The King replied, 'But woman I desire Peace and seek Peace and would have Peace, and tell the Prince of Orange so'. Having delivered her message Esther returned home. Although the war did not cease at once so that some Quakers judged her to have failed in her mission, there is no doubt that she had been faithful to her calling and her straightforwardness and fearlessness could not fail to make an impression.

Esther died in London in December 1696 at the age of sixty-seven, and was buried, probably in Bunhill Fields Quaker burying ground, having been an uncomfortable and outspoken Friend for more than forty years.

A modern view of Bunhill Fields burying ground

Quaker Alphabet Blog 2014 - E for Ellis Hookes

Ellis Hookes was baptised at St Margaret's Westminster in 1630 into an upper class family. His father Thomas was a courtier, a Yeoman of the Woodyard and servant to the young Prince Charles, later Charles II. It was therefore a great shock to his family and their friends when Ellis became a Quaker.

Sir William Waller

He tells of going, in 1657, to deliver a letter to his mother while she was staying with Sir William Waller and his wife at Stanton Harcourt in Oxfordshire. Lady Waller decided to try to argue him out of his Quaker beliefs and so she told him to go into her chamber. Once there she took his hat off his head, locked the door, and shouted at him. Ellis remained silent until in exasperation he said unceremoniously, 'Woman, shew thyself a sober woman.' In a fury Lady Waller began beating him about the head and pulling his hair, saying that she had never been called Woman before. She commanded her servant and her son to stand before Ellis and keep him penned in a corner of the room, where she continued to beat him, and called for a stick, as her fists were sore.


After a time he said, 'Instead of showing thyself a sober woman, thou hast shown thyself more like a beast.' At this insult to his wife, Sir William Waller, who had hitherto taken no part in the affair struck the Quaker down with a blow on his head, and they all cried, 'Out of the doors with him.' He was turned out and sent off, bare-headed, and deaf for a week from the blows which he had received. His parents were urged to disown him, which they did, although later his father relented and left Ellis money in his will.

However Ellis Hookes was not destitute but was employed from 1657 as a public servant to Friends, acting as a secretary to several London Quaker committees and receiving a salary of £50 a year. He was the first in a long line of Recording Clerks, although he never used that title. He was responsible for collecting, collating and copying accounts of the persecution and sufferings of Friends sent in from all over the country and wrote out the first two manuscript volumes in his own neat handwriting. He also suffered himself, not only at the hands of Lady Waller but in Newgate prison.

The Great Books of Sufferings in Friends House Library

As well as acting as a clerk Ellis undertook a plethora of time-consuming administrative and financial tasks. He bought property on behalf of Friends and was much concerned with Quaker publications. From 1672 he was clerk of the Second Day Morning Meeting which read, corrected and approved (or disapproved) all Quaker writings. He wrote some historical and controversial works himself, collaborated with George Fox on A Primer and Catechism for Children and An Introduction for Right Spelling, and edited and published several collected works of Friends such as Edward Burrough and James Parnell after their deaths. On top of this Ellis wrote regularly to Margaret Fell at Swarthmore to let her know the news of Friends in London.


In spite of his tireless efforts on behalf of Friends there were some who resented Ellis's position at the heart of London Quakers and thought he wielded an undue influence for someone who was paid for his work. In 1679 the Meeting of Twelve, to whom he had given devoted service for twenty-two years, demanded that 'Ellis Hookes do give an account what work and service he doth once every quarter to the Meeting in writing, that it may appear whether his work deserves his yearly salary.' His friends knew his worth however and Francis Howgill encouraged him, 'Though some slight thee, heed not that, but do what thou can and be diligent.'

Bunhill Fields burial ground

Ellis Hookes had no home or family of his own but lived in lodgings. For the last twenty years of his life he lodged with a widow, Anne Travers of Southwark, of whom he says, 'for her tenderness and care over me, being a weak man, I am greatly engaged.' During the Plague in 1665 Ellis stayed in London. Three of Anne's family died within a month and Ellis expected to die too but he says, 'every morning I counted it a great mercy that the Lord gave me another day and I was made a strength and help to poor Anne.' The next year during the Great Fire of London Ellis made it his priority to save as many of the books and papers he had worked so hard on when the Quaker headquarters at Bull and Mouth was burned to the ground.

Ellis Hookes continued to serve the Society of Friends until the end of his life. He attended Meeting for Sufferings in September 1681 and died at Anne Travers' house just over a month later at the age of 50. He was buried among Friends at Bunhill Fields, 'a very serviceable and good man.'

Quaker Alphabet Week 9 - E for Solomon Eccles

A consort of viols by Freyse, German, mid-17th century

Solomon Eccles, sometimes called Eagle, was born around 1618 in London where his father was a professor of music. Solomon became a composer and taught the virginals and viol, making a good living from his profession. Although brought up in the established church Solomon was dissatisfied and, following the spirit of his times, pursued religious truth through several different denominations, becoming a Presbyterian, an Independent and a Baptist before being convinced by Quakerism around 1660.

Title page of A Musick -Lector

On becoming a Friend Solomon came to see  music making as a vanity which he must renounce. He sold all his books and instruments for a considerable sum but then began to be afraid that they might injure the morals of the purchasers. He therefore bought them back and burned them publicly on Tower Hill. To support himself Solomon learned the trade of a shoemaker. In 1667 he published a tract A Musick Lector:OR,The Art of MUSICK that is so much vindicated in Christendom, discoursed of by way of Dialogue, between three men of several judgments. [a musician, a Baptist and a Quaker]

Like other Friends at this time Solomon was given to preaching not only by words but by acting out his message through 'signs'. In 1662 he sat in the pulpit of a church making shoes in order to show that it was not a special place. He was thrown out of the church but  returned the next day, this time reaching the pulpit by jumping from pew to pew. After this startling demonstration he was, perhaps unsurprisingly, arrested and imprisoned.

Perhaps Solomon's most famous 'sign', reported by both Samuel Pepys and Daniel Defoe, was to walk naked or semi-naked with a pan of fire and brimstone balanced on his head, threatening passers-by with the fate of Sodom if they did not repent. Solomon began acting out this 'sign' in London in 1665 so that some saw it as a prophecy of the Great Fire, but he continued with it in 1667 in Scotland when he denounced the worshippers in a Catholic church and later in Cork, where he exhibited himself stark naked and was flogged through the town and expelled.

Solomon Eagle, 1843 (oil on canvas), Poole, Paul Falconer (1807-79) / Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust

Although his actions seem extreme Solomon was very clear that he was only acting as God commanded him and against his own will. In 1677 he wrote, 'I can truly say this, that I have strove much and besought the Lord that this going naked might be taken from me, before ever I went a sign at all.'

Solomon Eccles was not solely a person of extremes. George Fox trusted him and took him to the West Indies in 1671 where Solomon was very useful in organising Quakers in Barbados and Jamaica. In 1672 he went to New England but was arrested at Boston and banished. Solomon came back to England in 1680 and died in Spitalfields in London around January 1682 aged about 64. His three sons did not follow their father into Quakerism and all became musicians.

Solomon Eccles was much more than an eccentric but rather, as William Sewel who knew him well, said 'an extraordinary zealous man and what he judged evil he warmly opposed, even to the hazard of his life.' In the present day the story of Solomon Eccles has inspired the American Quaker Jon Watts to write a song about him.

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.