Note 12 — CHAPTER 1. (continued 2)

Ellis Hookes was employed in London as a recording clerk to the Society of Friends. It was he who commenced the Record of Sufferings (mentioned to George Fox in a letter bearing date 1660, inserted in Letters, &c., of Early Friends, p. 86, 87), which were written out into large folio volumes, still preserved among the Society’s records in London. These are continued down to the present day in forty or more of these large volumes. The clear and excellent writing of Ellis Hookes extends over a large portion of the first of these bulky folios. To the narratives of sufferings and persecutions, were added accounts of what were regarded as judgments upon persecutors; which were, doubtless in that day, ordered to be recorded, under a sense of the fear of God, and in testimony unto his overruling power.

Ellis Hookes died in 1681. In the London Register of Burials, he is described “of Horslydown in Southwark, scrivenor;” and “died the 12th of the 9th month, 1681, of a consumption (having been clerk to Friends in London about twenty-four years)—he was buried in Checker Alley.”