Wight: Rise and Progress of the People called Quakers

A history of the rise and fall of the people called Quakers

Wight, Thomas and Rutty, John. A history of the rise and progress of the people called Quakers, in Ireland, from the years 1653 to 1700. London: William Phillips, 1800.

A history of the rise and fall of the people called Quakers

A history of the rise and fall of the people called Quakers

Wight, Thomas and Rutty, John. A history of the rise and progress of the people called Quakers, in Ireland, from the years 1653 to 1700. London: William Phillips, 1800.

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The Quaker faith was introduced into Ireland in 1654 with the first recorded meetings for worship being held in the home of William Edmondson in Lurgan, Co. Armagh. Its roots can be found among English soldiers, farmers, and merchants arriving in Ireland after the English Civil War, converting from a variety of other nonconforming Protestant faiths.

The Quaker faith endured many injustices throughout its early history which included imprisonment, corporal punishment, and the payment of fines for not tithing to the Church of Ireland. Along with recording details of births, deaths and marriages, details of these injustices were recorded at monthly meetings.

Details from such meetings were compiled and printed in a number of books including A History of the Rise and Progress of the People called the Quakers in Ireland which provides an outline of the first century of the Quaker faith in Ireland. The volume charters the Quaker faith from its first appearance, to the settlement of church-discipline in 1669, the end of troubles under King James the Second, to the passing of the act of parliament for registering meeting-houses in 1719.

The 37th President of the United States Richard Milhouse Nixon, who grew up in a Californian Quaker family, visited Ireland in 1970 for a three day visit and took the opportunity to visit Timahoe, Co Kildare. A maternal ancestor, Thomas Milhouse of Timahoe emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1729.