Note 42 — Chapter IV

This is the whole of our data for the origin of the name "Quaker." Fox told the Justice to tremble at the word of the Lord, and the Justice thereupon fixed the name "quaker" upon him. There is probably, however, something back of this particular incident which helped give the name significance. The editors of the New English Dictionary (see the word Quaker) have discovered the fact that this name for a religious sect was not entirely new at this time. Letter No. 2,624 of the Clarendon collection, written in 1647, speaks of a sect from the continent possessed of a remarkable capacity for trembling or quaking: "I heare of a sect of woemen (they are at Southworke) come from beyond the Sea, called quakers, and these swell, shiver and shake, and when they come to themselves (for in all this fitt Mahomett's holy-ghost hath bin conversing with them) they begin to preach what hath been delivered to them by the Spirit." It seems probable that Justice Bennet merely employed a term of reproach already familiar. It is, further, evident that the Friends themselves were sometimes given to trembling, and that the name came into general use because it fitted. (See Sewel's "History of the People Called Quakers," Vol. I., p. 63. Philadelphia, 1823.) The name first appears in the records of Parliament, in the Journals of the House of Commons, in 1654.