THE BEGINNINGS OF QUAKERISM IN 

 GUERNSEY. 



BY MISS EDITH CAREY. 



This lecture is founded on the Memoirs of Nicholas Naftel* 

 one of the earliest converts to Quakerism in Guernsey. These 

 Memoirs were published in America in 1888 by Joseph 

 Nicholas Naftel, grandson of the writer, and are exceedingly 

 rare ; as they give many sidelights on Guernsey at the latter 

 part of the 18th Century, I have taken them as the basis of 

 my lecture to-night. 



We know that Dicey, writing of Guernsey in 1750, says : 

 " Dissenters they have none " ; and Samuel Bonamy, BailifFof 

 Guernsey, from 1758 to 1771, in a MS. "Description of the 

 Island of Guernsey" written in 1749, and now in the British 

 Museum, wrote : •" At present the Church of England is the 

 only communion among us, there being not one dissenter to my 

 knowledge, neither protestant nor papist." 



It was not until 27 years later that Quakerism, the 

 earliest of our local dissenting sects, started in Guernsey. I 

 know that 1782 has been the generally accepted date of the 

 foundation of Quakerism in Guernsey, but these Memoirs will, 

 I think, prove that the real date should be 1776. 



The Quakers, or the " Society of Friends," as they are 

 more properly called, are guided as to their religious life, by 

 rules drawn up, about 1648, by George Fox, a cobbler and 

 grazier's apprentice, who had thought them out while keeping 

 his master's sheep. Eventually he left his occupation to become 

 an itinerant preacher, " holding forth " without invitation 

 wherever he went, and rebuking whatever evil he came in 

 contact with, though frequently imprisoned for so doing. 

 Amongst his many disciples were William Penn, Robert 

 Barclay, and John Gurney, citizen of Norwich. Fox carried 

 his reverence for supernatural teaching so far that he rejected 

 all religious ritual, forms and ceremonies. His followers 

 abjured titles, raised their hats to no man, swore no oaths — 

 even of fidelity or allegiance — resented no persecutions and 

 prosecuted no wars. You remember the epigram that a would- 



