Sex and Power in the Early Quaker Movement: The Case of Martha Simmonds

Named derisively for the trembling, or quaking, which shook many of the believers, the Quakers, or Society of Friends, were one of the most prominent of the religious movements of the revolutionary period. ¹ Although their numbers were probably not great, their public profile was high, and contemporaries increasingly feared that they were growing in converts and power during the 1650s. Their theology was one based on experience: they believed that God was present in all human beings, and that an established church and ministry were unnecessary. Women were highly visible in the early stages of the movement, from roughly 1650 to 1670. The Quakers were affected by the Restoration rather less than other religious sects. Some of the changes that came to the movement in the 1660s were more a response to the growing need for strategies for survival. With organisation, female participation lessened. But the process of containment of women had begun earlier. The history of the early Quaker movement shows the defeat of some female challenges to patriarchal power within the sect.