ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



' old priest ' for ' new presbyter.' Many people were not hostile to the 

 old Church government, provided that it did not govern laymen ; and 

 those who were hostile to it were more often Sectaries than Presbyterians. 

 The real question in England was not between two systems of compre- 

 hensive and universal territorial Church government, but between the 

 Anglicans and the Congregationalists. When the former were discredited 

 by the extreme position taken by their leaders, and by the defeat of their 

 friends in the field, it was the latter who had their chance ; not the 

 supporters of a system with no real root in England, but imported ready 

 made from Scotland. 



Among the sects which appeared in Surrey, and assumed some 

 organized form during the Commonwealth period, were the Quakers. 

 Fox in his Journal^ records a meeting at Reigate in 1655. The Friends 

 already existed in the neighbourhood. They mentioned to him Thomas 

 Moore, J. P., as a ' friendly, moderate man,' whom he afterwards found 

 ' serviceable to the Truth.' From this meeting Fox went to the house 

 of Thomas Pachins, probably of Newdigate, and then to Horsham. 

 When the insurrection of the Fifth Monarchy Men in London shortly 

 after the Restoration led to a general arrest of Sectaries, Fox says that 

 Pachins was dragged out of a sick bed to prison, where he died. Fox 

 is very amusing on his visit to Farnham during the Protectorate. He 

 put up at the ' Bush,' and the ' Professors ' of the town came to argue with 

 him, and ordered ale and faggots, but left him to pay the bill. He had 

 his gentle revenge by writing to ' the priest,' who was turned out in 

 1662, and so may be supposed to have winced at the address, pointing 

 out how ill he had taught his people. The visit of Fox to Surrey 

 in 1655 seems to be the beginning of a very vigorous growth of Quaker- 

 ism in the county. His Reigate meeting was perhaps not the first 

 actually held in Surrey. In June, 1 677, it is recorded that Richard Bax 

 of Capel had held a monthly meeting at his house for upwards of twenty 

 years. A burial ground was acquired near Richard Bax's house in 1672, 

 and meetings were also held at another house in Capel, at Reigate, 

 Farnham, Godalming, Worplesdon, Guildford, Eashing, Parkgate, Blech- 

 ingley, Kingston, Charlwood and Dorking. Ambrose Rigg of Gatton, 

 Rowley Fitchbourne of Reigate, and other gentry or substantial yeomen, 

 several of the Bax family. Constables, Steeres, Butchers, Bookers, Peters, 

 Wallis, and other well known Surrey names belonged to the Quakers in 

 their early days. The village of Capel was a centre of the society ; they 

 were fairly numerous there, and round about in Dorking, Ockley, Charl- 

 wood, and as far as Reigate, where another burial ground existed. The 

 meeting house in Capel only dated from 1725. The Friends had before 

 met at Pleystowe and Kitlands, the houses of two of the Bax family. 

 In 1674 a collection had been made for building a meeting house in 

 Guildford.^ 



* Folio, London, 1694, p. 171. 



* Fox, Journal, and MS. collections of the late Rev. T. R. O'Fflahertie, taken from books of the 

 society in custody of Mr. T. W. Marsh, Dorking. 



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