The Quakers in English society, 1655-1725

"By using a wide range of primary source material from the manuscript records of the Church and parish to the diaries and pamphlets of ordinary Quakers, this study demonstrates that Quakers were not the marginal and isolated people often portrayed by contemporaries and historians. The study charts the evolution of the sect over a seventy-year period, during which it was to adopt a number of strategies in its dealings with outsiders and worldly institutions.

Indeed, in the process Quakers encouraged a tolerance of diversity which in itself contributed to a sea change in contemporary thought. The study also examines many other facets of Quakerism - from the literacy rates of Quakers, and the level of persecution suffered by followers to the reasons for the sect's decline - and concludes with a survey of the changes that had overcome the movement since the heady days of birth."--BOOK JACKET.