ABSTRACT
Most of the early autobiographical pamphlets were published in the hope of convincing the world of the reality of Friends’ experience and hence of the truth of their teaching. William Caton had been a servant in the Swarthmore household and was one of Fox’s own converts. He was the pioneer Quaker missionary in Holland and Germany. The journal begins with a detailed account of his conversion and goes on to relate his call to the preaching ministry and his subsequent travels, sufferings and imprisonments. Apart from letters and other documents inserted in the journals, material must frequently have been drawn from a private diary begun by the writer after finishing his account of convincement. As the Quaker movement gathered momentum during the early fifties the message was preached not only throughout Great Britain but also beyond the seas. As early as 1654 William Edmundson settled in Ireland, and his journal records his work there and three subsequent journeys to America.
