Read Part One HERE
In this post I will focus on a Quaker Woman named Elizabeth Hooton, who lived from 1600 - 1672. She was the first of the Quaker women missionaries. She travelled several times to the New World and endured persecution well into her old age.
Not much is known of Elizabeth's early life. She was born Elizabeth Carrier in Ollerton, Nottinghamshire. She married Oliver Hooton and the two moved to Skegby, where they had several children. By 1646, when George Fox came to Skegby, she had become part of the local Baptist community. But her meeting with George Fox was to change her whole life.
Initially against the wishes of her husband, she began to organise meetings at her house where the remnants of her Baptist group could hear Fox's ministry. This group became known as the Children of Light.
It was the power of Hooton's words that persuaded Fox that God anointed women for ministry as well as men. Within a few years, she had become one of his itinerant preachers. In 1651, she was imprisoned in Derby for "reproving a priest," and in 1652 she was jailed for 16 months in York for preaching in a church at Rotherham.
She was literate and wrote letters to judges and other public officials. When in jail in Lincoln in 1654, she wrote a letter to the authorities there protesting conditions in the prison and calling for separation of the sexes and useful employment for the prisoners.
In 1661, at the age of sixty, Elizabeth made her first trip to New England with her friend Joan Brocksop. Quakers in New England were suffering severe persecution. Not long belore four Quakers had been hanged in Boston. Though the death penalty had since been revoked by King Charles II, other punishments had been devised for Quaker "blasphemers," of which the harshest was the "Cart and Tail Law" - those condemned were stripped to the waist, tied behind a cart and dragged from town to town, where they were whipped with the knotted rope....
Ships bringing Quakers to Massachusetts were threateded with steep fines, so Elizabeth and her friend Joan travelled via Virginia. Having reached Boston by small boat and overland, they attempted to visit Quakers imprisoned there, but were waylaid and taken before Governor Endicott. After they had been imprisoned for days without food, put in the stocks and beaten in three towns, they were taken out into the wilderness and left. The two women survived by following wolf tracks through the snow until they found a settlement.
Having made their way to Rhode Island and thence to Barbados, the two women returned to England. Once there, Elizabeth, petitioned the King to stop the persecution of Quakers in Massachusetts Bay Colony. Following him to where he played tennis, she refused to kneel in his presence, but walked beside him as an equal. She must have won the King's respect, because he gave her a document authorizing her to buy land in Massachusetts and use it to make a safe haven for Quakers in the colony.
Elizabeth returned to Massachusetts accompanied by her daughter. However, the royal seal on the letter proved no protection. Once again,she was repeatedly stripped, beaten and left in the wilderness by the authorities in Boston and Cambridge.
In 1666 Elizabeth returned to England. She clearly had no taste for a quiet life, though, as shortly after, she was imprisoned again in Lincoln for disturbing a congregation.
In 1672, George Fox planned a trip to Jamaica, his first and only voyage to the New World. Although Elizabeth was now 71, she was determined to accompany him. Fox fell ill on the voyage and Elizabeth nursed him, probably ensuring his survival. However, withim one week of their arrival, she herself fell suddely ill and died the next day. Fox wrote of her death: "Elizabeth Hooton, a woman of great age, who had travelled much in Truth's service, and suffered much for it, departed this life. She was well the day before she died, and departed in peace, like a lamb, bearing Testimony to Truth at her departure."
P.S. George Fox was the founder of the Society of Friends or the Quaker Movement.
Read Part Three HERE
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