Leeds Friends’ Minute Book 1692 – 1712

edited by Jean and Russell Mortimer (1980)

 

This volume is an edition of the earliest minute book of meetings for church business of Leeds Quakers. The preparative Meeting (held in preparation of business for the executive Monthly Meeting) supervised the affairs of local Friends. It looked to the spiritual and temporal welfare of members, saw to property matters, cared for the poor, advised and assisted young men setting up in trade and dealt with backsliders.

This minute book reveals the difficulties faced by the Meeting. It makes available material to illustrate the workings of democratic process in a religious body which took its rise in the aftermath of the Civil War.

A general introduction discusses the organisation of the Society of Friends in Yorkshire, and the survey is completed with forty pages of biographical notes on people who make an appearance in the record, based on unpublished documents and registers. There is a comprehensive index.