A towering figure in the history of Irish Quakerism, and friend of William Penn, Anthony Sharp left England in 1669 to settle in Dublin and carve out a place for himself in the woolen trade. This book is not only a biography of Sharp but a detailed portrait of Dublin’s community of Friends.

As a minority group, the Quakers, comprising a small number of families who intermarried only among themselves, used these ties to develop their business and industrial interests where they filled the void between the 'Ascendency' landowning classes and the bulk of the population who had been disenfranchised by the Penal Laws.The Goodbodys were such a family, coming to prominence in the 19th century when they started flour milling, later branching out. With an unusual name they effectively created their own business brand.

The laundry industry, an essential part of nineteenth-century domestic life, has been little studied. This book describes the founding and running of Dublin's largest laundry. Set up in 1888, the Dublin Laundry rapidly expanded and by 1900 the company employed 300 people. Its founder, Thomas Edmondson, is an intriguing character, a shrewd businessman and paternalistic employer, a resourceful operator and humane man, who operated his top-class 'Dublin Laundry' within a larger British Isles Quaker network. His life, one of both commercial success and great personal tragedy, offers a fascinating insight into life and trade in Dublin at the turn of the century. This historical biography throws new light on the Quaker movement and the business intricacies of creating and financing a new laundry, and vividly recreates the working conditions of the time with many rare photographs.

Irish Quaker biographers have focused on ministers, the influential and wealthy; many biographies are also unstructured and selective, leaving gaps in the narrative. The current work uses the life and family of John Boles (1661-1731), a Quaker stalwart for 50 years, as a case study for the biographer, introducing the major sources and showing how they can be deployed to 'resurrect' the contributions of the anonymous Quaker majority. As the biography is developed, information is explored and analyzed to construct reliable genealogical charts; information is culled from Friends' records to document the contributions and failures of family members in the context of their Quaker meetings; land records are consulted to measure and assess their gradual accumulation of wealth and the historical context is discussed as a backdrop to their evolving socio-economic status - all topics essential for comprehensive Quaker biographies and family histories.

The author analyses and describes the manner in which the Newgarden Meeting evolved from circa 1650 to 1730, exploring a wide range of topics including the growth in membership, Meeting discipline, governance, socio-economic status, tithe assessment, record keeping, religious life, education and migration. A number of new approaches to the analysis of Quaker records are used to assess participation of members in Meeting governance and readers are introduced to a "Reconstitution Model" that incorporates and integrates all manner of Quaker records enabling researchers to estimate Meeting membership at any point in time as well as to explore many other aspects of Quaker life with reasonable confidence. The author demonstrates that the Meeting was essentially governed by the wealthiest Members and he offers a number of select biographies of the wealthy and Members of lesser socio-economic status for comparison.

This landmark volume is the first in a century to examine the “Second Period” of Quakerism, a time when the Religious Society of Friends experienced upheavals in theology, authority and institutional structures, and political trajectories as a result of the persecution Quakers faced in the first decades of the movement’s existence. The authors and special contributors explore the early growth of Quakerism, assess important developments in Quaker faith and practice, and show how Friends coped with the challenges posed by external and internal threats in the final years of the Stuart age—not only in Europe and North America but also in locations such as the Caribbean. This groundbreaking collection sheds new light on a range of subjects, including the often tense relations between Quakers and the authorities, the role of female Friends during the Second Period, the effect of major industrial development on Quakerism, and comparisons between founder George Fox and the younger generation of Quakers, such as Robert Barclay, George Keith, and William Penn. Accessible, well-researched, and seamlessly comprehensive, The Quakers, 1656–1723 promises to reinvigorate a conversation largely ignored by scholarship over the last century and to become the definitive work on this important era in Quaker history. In addition to the authors, the contributors are Erin Bell, Raymond Brown, J. William Frost, Emma Lapsansky-Werner, Robynne Rogers Healey, Alan P. F. Sell, and George Southcombe.

The modern reputation of Friends in the United States and Europe is grounded in the relief work they have conducted in the presence and aftermath of war. Friends (also known as Quakers) have coordinated the feeding and evacuation of children from war zones around the world. They have helped displaced persons without regard to politics. They have engaged in the relief of suffering in places as far-flung as Ireland, France, Germany, Ethiopia, Egypt, China, and India. Their work was acknowledged with the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947 to the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and the Friends Service Council of Great Britain. More often, however, Quakers live, worship, and work quietly, without seeking public attention for themselves. Now, the Friends are a truly worldwide body and are recognized by their Christ-centered message of integrity and simplicity, as well as their nonviolent stance and affirmation of the belief that all people--women as well as men--may be called to the ministry. The expanded second edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Friends (Quakers) relates the history of the Friends through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and over 700 cross-referenced dictionary entries on concepts, significant figures, places, activities, and periods. This book is an excellent access point for scholars and students, who will find the overviews and sources for further research provided by this book to be enormously helpful.