James Tennant


James Tennant (d. 1674) lived in Scarhouse, Langstrothdale, Yorkshire. The Long Journal and First Publishers of Truth record that he was visited by Fox ‘at his first comeing into ye North, wch was in ye year 1652’, when the latter was directed there and preached, converting James Tennant and his wife, and that thereafter, a Scarhouse Meeting of Friends was set up [page 305]. The placing of this first visit to Scarhouse after rather than before Fox’s arrival in Wensleydale is curious, given its apparent proximity to his presumed route from Pendle to Wensleydale, although the lack of details make it impossible to establish precisely which way he proceeded (In Fox’s Footsteps [page 62]). Possibly Fox heard of the Tennants once he arrived in Wensleydale and made his way back to visit them, or, alternatively, he may have called on the way to Wensleydale but placed the visit out of sequence when he came to write and dictate versions of the Journal. Tennant’s continued personal testimony against the paying of tithes led to his imprisonment, and he ‘Patiently Endured Close Imprisonment untill Death’ in August 1674 (First Publishers [page 306]). The 1694 printed edition of the Journal records that George Fox visited his widow in 1677.


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Further Reading
David and Anthea Boulton In Fox’s Footsteps: a journey through three centuries (Dent: Dales Historical Monographs, 1998).
‘The First Publishers of Truth’: being early records, now first printed, of the introduction of Quakerism into the counties of England and Wales, edited Norman Penney (Friends Historical Society Journal Supplements 1-5; London: Headley; New York: Taber, 1907).


For the passages from First Publishers of Truth, and the 1694 Journal, see 'Other Sources' on index page.