ABSTRACT
In 1653, a year after George Fox’s itinerant mission through northern England had transformed the nascent Quaker movement into an increasingly sizeable and potent force, Francis Higginson published The Irreligion of the Northern Quakers, a condemnation of this latest radical religious grouping. Higginson, a minister from Kirkby Stephen in Westmorland who claimed some first-hand knowledge of early Friends (Higginson 1653: 15), was troubled by many aspects of Quaker doctrine and practice, not least by the manner and circumstances of their speaking:1
They have onely their own mode of speaking [. . .] which they do not call, but deny to be preaching; nor indeed doth it deserve that more honourable Name. [. . .] Their Speaker for the most part uses the posture of standing, or sitting with his hat on; his countenance severe, his face downward, his eyes fixed mostly towards the Earth, his hands and fingers expanded, continually striking gently on his breast; his beginning is without a Text, abrupt and sudden to his hearers, his Voice for the most part low, his Sentences incohærent, hanging together like Ropes of Sand, very frequently full of Impiety [. . .]. His admiring Auditors that are of his way, stand the while like men astonished, listening to every word, as though every word were oraculous; and so they believe them to be the very words and dictates of Christ speaking in him.
