The Society appoints a president each year who is invited to give an address, usually at the time of the annual gathering of the Religious Society of Friends (non-Quakers are welcome). The Society aims to hold one or two regional meetings each year.
Friends Historical Society Presidential Address and AGM
All members of the Friends Historical Society are welcome to attend the FHS Presidential Address and Annual General Meeting.
Presidential Address 2024
In 2024 the FHS Presidential Address was given by Dr Catie Gill, formerly senior lecturer in English at Loughborough Unversity. Her main areas of interest are seventeenth-century radicalism, religious communities, and life writings. Her lecture was entitled ‘Take care of all my books and Epeseles [sic]’ (Fox’s Will, 1688). Why does Fox’s Spelling Matter?’
George Fox’s Will was printed in the early eighteenth-century as part of an extended pamphlet debate. The person most responsible for its publication was Francis Bugg, a prolific writer and ex-Quaker, who was then at the peak of a pamphleteering campaign. A publishing phenomenon, some estimates suggest that 50,000 copies had been printed by 1703, and it is clear from records that the Will had secured a readership beyond Britain in the trans-Atlantic world.
This talk will make use of the critique of Fox that Bugg put forward, while also maintaining that the Will can be read sympathetically, as a document that unlocks the power of Fox’s ministry. It will use DH (Digital Humanities) techniques to contextualise the language Fox uses in terms of currency. A copy of the Will (as annotated by Bugg) is available online [see https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_the-last-will-of-that-im_bugg-francis_1701], should you wish to read it before the talk, though pre-existing knowledge of this document is not a requirement.
Future Meetings
Members and others are invited to contact the Clerk if they are interested in presenting material at a future meeting.
