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Kendal
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Kendal seems to have been a favourite theatre for early Quaker public comminations and Woes, presumably because it had a prosperous market, and was the chief, though not the county town of Westmorland, which was Appleby. Fox made good use of this in 1652, when
... I returned back Into Westmoreland again & spoake through Kendall vpon a markett day in ye dreadefull powr of God yt people flew like chaffe ^ before mee into there houses & warned ym of ye mighty day of ye Lorde & how yt ye Ld God was come to teach his people himselfe. & many people tooke my parte & seuerall was convinct: & some people att last fell to fightinge about mee & I went & spoake to ym & they parted again ...
Long Journal (Spence MS) folio 40r
See also Francis Howgill’s WOE
AGAINST THE Magistrates, Priests, and People of KENDALL (London: 1654), where he says that the Quakers
were commanded by God to ‘to go naked along your streets’ for a sign. It was also the centre of a large parish,
which made the church and its minister a favourite target for disruption.
Among early Kendal Friends and ministers cited by First Publishers were Thomas Holme,
weaver; James Harrison (who emigrated to Pennsylvania); Elizabeth Fletcher and Elizabeth Levens (who went naked
through the streets of Oxford, and were water-boarded by the students); Christopher Atkinson (who fell from grace);
and Robert Barrow, waller (who was wrecked among cannibals on the way to Pennsylvania, but survived). Friends
from Underbarrow and Grayrigg (both in the parish) attended Kendal meetings and were jailed there.
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