Following his leading on the importance of “gospel order” for the emerging community, George Fox as early as 1652 began to encourage his followers to set up their own worship meetings. Soon monthly meetings for business were established. In 1656 he organized men’s quarterly meetings. What is now Britain Yearly Meeting began to meet regularly in 1668. The Meeting for Sufferings was established to aid the victims of persecution and soon became the general executive body of Friends in Britain.

George Fox, born the son of a weaver in Leicestershire, England, like others found little to sustain him in contemporary religion. At the age of 19, he began his search for truth and founded a movement that before his death in 1691 numbered over 50,000 members in England alone.

The Truth is one and the same always. Though ages and generations pass away—one generation goes and another comes; yet the Word, and the Power, and the Spirit of the Living God endures for ever and changes not.

– Margaret Fell Fox,
A Brief Collection of Remarkable Passages Relating to..., 1710