Abstract/Summary

This thesis constitutes an empirical local study of Quakers’ experience under the law between 1660 and 1685 when the monarchy and the Church of England were restored. Members of the Religious Society of Friends, who became known as Quakers, were newly prominent Protestant opponents to, and separatists from, the Church of England. The thesis considers the substantive and procedural aspects of the law that gave rise to the sufferings which Quakers recorded during this period. It critically examines those records. Focusing upon the North West of England, it draws together under-researched local and national sources that illustrate the operation of both ecclesiastical and secular legal processes as they had evolved by the mid-seventeenth century. This thesis examines, in particular, the historical law concerning tithes, oaths, ecclesiastical offences and religious meetings with which Quakers’ conscientious beliefs brought them into conflict. It also examines the way in which state and ecclesiastical power, through its legal processes, responded to the challenges that Quakers brought in the context of the wider relationship between religious dissent and the state in this pivotal period.