Note 15 — SWISS EXILES.
Reading edition
To the writer it is a question of some interest how far George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, was acquainted with the lives, sufferings, and writings of the Anabaptists.
The common people of England may readily have obtained some knowledge of the Baptists from the number that were cruelly put to death. In 1534, Henry VIII. commanded foreigners who had been baptized in infancy, and had been rebaptized, to leave the realm in twelve days, on pain of death. It seems that certain Dutch Baptists braved the threatened punishment; for twenty-six were, in different places, and at different dates, burned within a few years. Under Edward VI., many Baptists suffered extreme punishment, Cranmer and Latimer, Ridley and John Rogers, either approving or actually assisting as inquisitors. See “The Baptists; Who they are, and What they have done,” by George B. Taylor, D.D.
The year 1534, in which Henry VIII. issued the proclamation alluded to, was the time of the Anabaptist occupation of Münster. The feelings of Henry towards the Peasants’ War and the Münster kingdom doubtless resembled those of his successor, in 1798, towards the French revolutionists,—but George III. did not put any one to death by fire.
Since the above was written has been published Barclay’s “Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth,” London, 1876. This author speaks of George Fox as having promulgated opinions and founded churches closely approximating to the Mennonite churches in Holland. He further says George Fox tells us that he had an uncle in London who was a Baptist.