The Quakers

The Society of Friends, more popularly known as the Quakers, owes its rise to George Fox (1624-91), a native of Leicestershire and a man with little education although he possessed a keen intelligence and spiritual power and personality that won him the affection of men and women from a wide variety of backgrounds. He had a profound knowledge of the bible and in an England demoralised by the Civil War (1642-49), he sought a different spiritual way from the prevailing religious thought of the day that took its ultimate stand on the scriptures. He began his ministry in 1647 and the name Quaker was derived from the spiritual "trembling" allegedly experienced by those who attended meetings.

By 1688, his followers were organised into a distinctive group called simply The Friends but their renunciation of creeds, paid ministers, formal services and oath taking, made them much persecuted in England because their nonconformity represented a radical movement in Protestantism, rejecting the sacraments and using simple speech such as thou and thee as a regular mode of address. They also favoured plain dress with no ornamentation and repudiated all forms of art, including music, as foolishly secular. Their intransigent pacifism frequently brought them into conflict with the state and members were often arraigned and in 1681, William Penn sailed for the New World and founded Pennsylvania in America as a Quaker refuge. But in the years since, their devotion to great social causes and to education has attracted widespread admiration while their enviable reputation for strict honesty has won them universal respect. 

The Quakers had a presence here in Bourne from the early 18th century. A survey by the Lincoln Diocese carried out between 1705 and 1723 stated that there were two conventicles, or meetings of dissenting groups, in the town, Anabaptist and Quaker. Information gathered by the Manor of Bourne Abbots in 1705 mentions a place in which the Quakers met for worship in West Street and it was described as "that building lately constructed and called the New Building, with a plot of land adjoining it, and containing, by estimation, nine yards in width and nineteen yards in depth". 

The property was, at that point, being let to three tenants, Simon Mason, Henry Harrington and Edward Walker who were "in the Society popularly called the Quakers". There was much opposition to the Quakers at this time, even from other churches in the town that frequently demonstrated an intolerance that reflected the nonconformist outlook of the period. An old minute book of the Bourne Baptist church still exists detailing the defection of one of its members, Edward Walker, who was one of the founders of the Quaker Meeting House in the town. It contains the copy of a letter warning that Walker, who lodged in the house of John Burrows, had become "kinder than ordinary" to his wife Mary. The offending couple had forsaken the Baptists and joined the Quakers "therefore we give notice to them and to others that we have dealt with them according to Gospel rules, for their pernicious principles and scandalous practices, and we do disown and reject them and count them unworthy of Christian communion, till they give satisfaction in such things as are or may be objected against them. In the meanwhile, we pray for them, that they may be delivered from their mistakes and be converted and saved."

Recusants during the late 17th century lived in many of the villages around Bourne and their names were kept in official records after being identified by their absence from church on three successive Sundays. It should be remembered that the country at this period of our history had an established protestant religion governed by the Church of England and although King Charles II (1660-1685) was anxious to extend religious tolerance, there were still harsh restrictions enforceable by Acts of Parliament on the activities of nonconformists. 

The largest group were Roman Catholics but there was also a more thinly spread distribution of Quakers, Anabaptists, Presbyterians and Independents. Their main offences under the legislation of the time were in holding conventicles in their homes. Conventicles were defined as "meetings for the exercise of religion in other manner to that according to the liturgy of the Church of England of which five persons were assembled over and above members of the household" and individuals attending such meetings were liable for fines of five shillings for the first offence and ten shillings thereafter. A preacher faced a penalty of £20 with £40 for subsequent offences and the owner of the house was liable to be fined £20. The consequences then of private worship were financially very serious. 

Eleven conventicles were proceeded against in the Kesteven area of Lincolnshire between 1676 and 1683 and five of these were Quaker meetings, among them one held by Thomas Heads, a shoemaker from the village of Thurlby. His name also appears again and again in the minutes of the Quarter Sessions, between the years 1683 and 1686 alleging that his absence from church had covered a period of 16 years. Heads was a leading member of the society and is mentioned several times in the Quaker meeting accounts from 1675 to 1708. His family originated in Bourne but after marrying Elizabeth Miller at South Witham in 1671, he moved to Thurlby in 1683. 

Heads became one of the prime movers in the establishment of the Quaker Meeting House in West Street, Bourne, and actually supervised some of the building work, particularly the laying of a new floor in 1706. When his mother, Mrs Emm Heads, died in 1683, he was fined for not swearing an oath to confirm that she had been buried at Thurlby in a coffin lined with sheep's wool or a shroud made entirely of wool, a requirement under an Act of Parliament of 1666 when an affidavit to this effect was included in all burial entries in the parish register. In refusing to comply, Heads was upholding one of the basic Quaker tenets not to swear oaths because they always told the truth. Other prosecutions for his beliefs were mainly for not going to church but were also for refusing to pay fines and for holding conventicles at his house at Thurlby, which was ransacked by constables on several occasions and goods taken in lieu of fines, even on one occasion the bed in which his wife was lying in childbirth.

The Quakers continued to run their Meeting House in West Street and an entry in the manorial records for 1757 confirms this because it stated that "it hath been for several years and is now used as a place for public worship by a Society of people called Quakers". But less than 20 years later, an entry of 1775 describes the surrender of the building to John Dove of Cawthorpe, a local landowner, and there is no mention at this time, as in previous entries, that it was a Quaker house. Also, as John Dove was not himself a Quaker, it is quite probable that the property was no longer used as a place for such worship. 

The reason for this is most certainly the decline in membership in the movement locally. Although there had been support for Quakers in Bourne at the beginning of the 18th century, presumably by 1775 there was insufficient interest to keep the meeting house going and by 1818, when the property is referred to in the will of John Dove's son, also named John, it is described as "the former Quakers' Meeting House, now used as two cottages" (pictured above) and there has been no Quaker Meeting House in Bourne since.

NOTE: I am indebted to J D Birkbeck for his permission to quote from his excellent
research into the origins of the Quakers in Bourne detailed
in his book A History of Bourne (1976).

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