Synopsis

A Quaker family archive inspired Janet Rothery to track the Quaker story from its seventeenth century beginnings to the late twentieth century as experienced by a rural community in Oxfordshire (formerly Berkshire), England. Exploring local Quaker meeting documents, correspondence, and family history, Janet shows how the Vale Quakers suffered cruel punishment for their independence, reaped the fruits of their social development, sought new ideas in the nineteenth century, and encouraged worldwide expansion of the Religious Society of Friends as it is today.