Beyond the Law: Fox, Antichrist, and the Bastard Norman Yoke

The early Quaker objection to certain laws is widely acknowledged. However, the reasoning behind this opposition has been less widely considered, with historians tending to follow Quaker mythology in attributing this positioning to fundamental ‘Testimonies’ established by the earliest Friends, not least a refusal to pay tithes or any of the fees associated with the ‘Hireling Minister’ and his ‘Steeple-House’. Wider consideration of both context and documentary evidence from early Advices and the Society’s records of the seventeenth century suggests that those who became Quakers were representative of a much wider group whose rejection of the authority of both ecclesiastical and state law was founded (however curiously) upon what they considered to be firmly rational grounds. As such, the varied and complex measures adopted by early Friends to place themselves beyond the law (including appeals, arbitration, the Anglican Church or perhaps any regulations associated with any religious formality) were a necessary consequence of two widely-held beliefs (both theological and secular) which had taken root in the interregnum populace but which have since become obscure: Antichrist and the Norman Yoke.