Elizabeth Hooton: First Quaker Woman Preacher (1600-1672)

In an age when women were forbidden from speaking in church, Elizabeth Hooton stood before magistrates, traveled across England, and preached a faith that would reshape religious life in the seventeenth century. This 1914 biography recovers the extraordinary life of a woman who became one of the first ordained voices in the Quaker movement, walking alongside George Fox himself as the Society of Friends took shape. Manners draws on unpublished letters and scattered archival fragments to reconstruct a life of remarkable tenacity: Hooton was arrested, imprisoned, and publicly whipped for her beliefs, yet she never stopped speaking. The book traces her journey from first encounter with Fox through decades of preaching, exile, and defense of religious liberty. It is both a portrait of one woman's courage and a window into the violent birth of a movement that would challenge the religious establishment's grip on English society.