Elizabeth Hooton: The Radical Life of the First Quaker Woman Preacher

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1. Hooton acted as a mentor to a young George Fox, helping him find his voice in the early days of the movement. Who in your life has acted as a spiritual anchor, and how did their belief in you change the way you speak your own truth?
2. After being released from prison, Hooton felt a “voice of the serpent” telling her she had suffered enough and deserved to stay home. When have you felt the temptation to settle for “enough,” and how do you discern between a need for rest and a call to persevere?
3. Even at seventy years old, Hooton crossed the ocean a third time because she felt a prophetic fire to continue her mission. What does mission look like as we age, and how do we keep our spiritual fire from burning down to embers?

Zack Jackson  

In the winter of 1662, about 20 miles outside of Boston, a heavy snow began to fall in the deep woods. The air smelled of sharp ice and frozen pine needles, and branches cracked like bone in the bitter wind. Two 60-year old women shivered in the deep snow. They had been left there by Puritan magistrates who had marched them two days into wilderness and left them to die. Their crime was simply being Quakers. They had been warned that Massachusetts was off limits to them, but they persisted. They believed that God’s calling on their lives was worth the risk of the death which seemed to be near at hand.

As they walked aimlessly through the old growth forests, they looked down. There, carved into the fresh powder, were the heavy, singular paw prints of a wild wolf. They began to follow. It was a path through the impossible, guided by a predator through a killing frost, until the animal led them—miraculously—to safety. To a small settlement who gave them provisions and sent them on their way to cause more trouble. One of those women was named Elizabeth Hooton, and even at 62 years old, her story was just getting started.

Zack Jackson

I’m Zack Jackson, and you’re listening to Thee Quaker Podcast. Today we’re stepping back into the 1660s—an era facing massive inequality, the collapse of social institutions, and profound uncertainty that, honestly, hits a little too close to home. But we’re not telling a story of chaos and darkness. We’re telling a story of a remarkable woman who figured out how to use that chaos to spread the light. A woman who can help us find the light, even today. 

Elizabeth Hooton is often called the first convert to Quakerism, but she was so much more than that. She was the fierce, calculating matriarch of the early Quaker movement who deftly outmaneuvered magistrates and kings to spread the Gospel of love across the English speaking world. But long before she braved the freezing woods of New England, she was living a different sort of life.

The year was roughly 1646. Elizabeth lived in Nottinghamshire, England. She was forty-seven years old, a farmer, and a mother of at least six children. She also knew how to read and write. This was a rare skill for a woman of her class, and she used it to explore a radical underground faith called the General Baptists. Historian and Quaker spirituality teacher Marcelle Martin explained the landscape.

Marcelle Martin  

They believed that salvation was open to anyone according to how you lived your life, not according to some predestination. And in that time, the Baptists, or Anabaptists in England were them, were right at the most radical end of all the many different religious groups that had sprung up, and some of the things we think of as original to Quakerism were actually part of this radical Baptist movement, including lay ministry.

Zack Jackson  

The General Baptists defied the strict rules of the time. They allowed non-clergy people to minister. They even allowed women to teach. Elizabeth stepped right into that leadership void. She turned her family’s farmhouse into an illegal underground church.

Marcelle Martin  

She was willingly breaking the law to hold religious gatherings in her farmhouse. Her husband was so upset about us, he threatened to leave her for a while, but eventually he didn’t leave her, but it was pretty uneasy in their marriage, which indicates what a strong, strong willed, independent woman she was.

Zack Jackson  

Elizabeth risked her reputation in the neighborhood. She risked her marriage. She built a radical spiritual community right in her living room. Then a restless twenty-two year old seeker knocked on her door. His name was George Fox.

Marcelle Martin  

and George Fox was going around looking for people who were open to new spiritual ideas and radical ideas. And he visited her group again and again, and they were very interested in what he had to say. As Baptists, they had already had a concept of Christ as the light, and were really receptive to his message and became what is thought of as possibly the very first Quaker group that gathered on a regular basis. They began to call themselves children of light, or children of the light, which was one of the first name for the Quaker movement. It happened in her in her home.

Zack Jackson  

It can be tempting to picture George Fox as a lone, rugged hero, wandering the hills of England by himself. But he wasn’t an island. He was just a young man in his early twenties—restless, searching, and likely a bit overwhelmed by the fire starting to burn inside him. He didn’t just need a place to stay; he needed someone who could help him find his footing. Someone grounded and wise. He found that in Elizabeth.

Marcelle Martin  

Elizabeth, as I see it, she was 47 when she met George Fox. He was 22 he hadn’t yet become known. He’d had some of his big openings. He was going around see, you know, finding people to tell about it. And I imagine that she was a nurturer to him, that she she took a group. She was a very she called herself a zealous religious person, but she was very interested in the spiritual life. She well read in the Bible, and that she was very interested in his spiritual experiences in a way that most people weren’t. He called her a very tender woman. She She drew him out, and she helped him find his voice. You

Zack Jackson  

That tenderness had a sharp edge. Elizabeth nurtured her friends, but she terrorized those in power. Providence College historian Adrian Weimer studies seventeenth-century religion. She told me all about Elizabeth’s radical path.

Adrian Weimer  

Well, Elizabeth Hooten is one of those people who pushes boundaries wherever she goes. You know, she confronts magistrates, she interrupts court meetings, she tries to interrupt church meetings and and she is a disrupter in a way that provokes a strong response and actually tests the boundaries, tests the limits of colonial laws and social structures.

Zack Jackson  

This disruption came at a heavy cost. Elizabeth was imprisoned at least four times in those early days. Her only crime was preaching. One time, she spent 6 months in prison for preaching in Lincolnshire, and then after release went right back and preached again which got her sent back to prison. And these weren’t like modern prisons. They were dark, damp, and crowded. Her friends had to bring her food and clothing to keep her alive. But Elizabeth did not sit quietly in the dark. She was busy.

Adrian Weimer  

She writes directly to Oliver Cromwell during the interregnum and says, One don’t put Quakers in prison. And also, your whole prison system is corrupt, and you need to fix it.

Zack Jackson  

The authorities finally released her, and she returned to her farm. By that time, her husband had joined the early Quaker movement too. Her home was peaceful again, and that prophetic fire inside her began to burn down to embers.

Marcelle Martin  

After she came out of prison, she wrote that she was very tempted to say, that’s enough. That’s enough suffering for the truth’s sake, I’m going to stay at home. You know, my marriage is now happy. Her husband had become a Quaker, too. I, you know, I’m I’m just going to stay at home from from now on. She said there was a voice of the serpent inside me telling me I had done enough. And that was, you know that was good. I’d done my part.

Zack Jackson  

She had a choice. Stay warm by the fire, and let the younger generation face the wrath of British government. Or follow Jesus back out into the cold.

Marcelle Martin  

And she said, but she felt like the voice of Christ was saying, No, I need you to keep going out and keep bringing the message. And she did for the rest of her life.

Zack Jackson  

In those days, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was a death trap for religious dissidents.

Marcelle Martin  

The Puritans in New England felt that Quakerism was a form of blasphemy, and they were they didn’t want their colonies to be infected by it, and they kept making harsher and harsher laws against it, because Quakers kept coming, and they wanted to keep them out. So finally, they had the death penalty for people who’d been banished and came back after banishment.

Zack Jackson  

The ultimate punishment was the gallows. Four Quakers had already swung from the rope that year. The King of England sent an order to stop the executions. But the Puritan magistrates found a loophole. If they couldn’t legally execute the Quakers, they would let the brutal New England winter do the job for them. That freezing winter we talked about at the very beginning of the episode? That was Elizabeth’s first trip across the Atlantic.

Marcelle Martin  

These people travel to the New England column. Means they left their lives in England because they wanted religious freedom, and now they’re living in a government which not all of them agree with, and they’re still hungry for spiritual truth, and the Quakers felt called to bring it to them. They felt that they were offering spiritual liberation to people with a Quaker message, and it it drew more and more Quakers. They called Boston the lions den, and they saw themselves in a in the model of the prophets. You know, God is sending us to speak God’s word to the people, the people who are hungry to hear it. So she went with another older woman as her partner, the first time she went and traveled from town to town,

Zack Jackson  

Their preaching quickly caught the attention of the authorities. The magistrates held them in a dark prison for two days without food. Then, they marched them twenty miles into the freezing wilderness.

Marcelle Martin  

They took them out into the snowy woods, you know, far from town and far from Rhode Island, where they were free to be who they were and let them in the snow. And they survived because a few of them had biscuits they could dip in the water, and they trusted God to lead them through the snow at one point. I mean, they were Elizabeth Hooten herself was dumped in the snow many times, but she said one time, they survived by following the tracks of a wolf in the snow.

Zack Jackson  

Elizabeth survived the cold and the wolves. She made it back to civilization, and  just kept preaching until the magistrates handed down their final ultimatum.

Marcelle Martin  

Eventually, she was banished from the colony on, you know, pain of death as she returned, and at that point she took a boat home to England.

Zack Jackson  

But Elizabeth was not defeated. She realized prophetic warnings were not working. She needed political leverage. She aimed straight for the top. King Charles the Second, played tennis almost every day, he was the most powerful man in the empire. Commoners were forbidden from standing in his presence. But Elizabeth did not care, so she waited outside the court.

Marcelle Martin  

Most people were not allowed to stand in the presence of the king because you were you were considered to be less than royalty, right? But Elizabeth Hooten would wait for the king at the tennis court. The king would come out of the tennis court and need to walk to his carriage, and she would walk right beside him. She did not crouch down or curtsy or she walked right beside him and told him how terribly the Quakers retreated in New England, and she asked him to sign a petition or give her permission to buy a house in New England where Quakers could be safe when they traveled.

Zack Jackson  

Elizabeth also had a legal excuse to be there. Local authorities had seized three of her horses to pay for her preaching fines. She used that theft as a pretext to complain. She demanded royal protection. Historian Adrian Weimer says her plan worked.

Adrian Weimer  

So this is amazing to me. I don’t know what happened in that conversation. We don’t have a transcript. We just have her letters much later describing the event. But somehow, I mean, either Charles, the second king of England just wants to get rid of her, or he’s worried about the mayors, or he’s worried about Margaret fell, who’s a very, very prominent Quaker, you know, we don’t know exactly, but she comes away with a royal license to buy land anywhere in the English colonies. It’s astonishing.

Zack Jackson  

It was a nearly unthinkable victory. Elizabeth held a golden ticket that no other Quaker had managed to attain. So she packed her bags and she sailed right back to New England for a second trip. This time, however, she brought her teenage daughter with her, and when she arrived, she marched directly into the Boston court.

Adrian Weimer  

So this is early 1663, she comes with her teenage daughter, and she does. She goes straight to Boston, straight to the magistrates, and she said, I would like to purchase a house, and I would also like to purchase land for a Quaker cemetery. And I’m actually not sure why that was so important to her, unless it was a sign of permanence that this is going to be a real community here in this place for the long term. So she goes to the Boston court four times with her royal license, and very importantly, she says to them, and we don’t have a transcript, but we know from piecing evidence together, she says something like, if you don’t allow me to buy a house in Boston, I’m going to go right back to Charles the second and complain to him about your sedition.

Zack Jackson  

It was a brilliant move because the magistrates were terrified of losing their colonial charter, and there was already tension between the Puritans and the King. But the Puritans were stubborn. They feared the corrupting influence of the Quakers more than they feared the vengeance of the King. So they came up with a compromise.

Adrian Weimer  

Well, you know, I think there must have been some kind of ongoing dialog, because the court’s response in one of those four meetings, probably the fourth was not an outright denial. What they say to her, and this is in a later letter to George Fox. It’s only in one document, but there’s no reason to distrust it. It’s her own words. She says, No house in Boston would they permit but in the country, meaning the countryside, I might. So no house. They’re not gonna let her buy a house in Boston, but out in the countryside, fine, do your thing. You know, the magistrates are trying to figure out what to do, and basically they must have come to a decision that, you know, fine. We don’t want her going back to the king complaining about us. That’s the last thing we need. We can’t have Quakers forming a base in Boston, because that’s going to be way too disruptive, but fine out in the countryside. Do it.

Zack Jackson  

The royal decree allowed her to purchase property in the city, but the Puritans simply refused to honor it. So in order to rid themselves of these pesky Quakers, they deployed a brutal new deterrent. It was designed to break spirits and bodies.

Marcelle Martin  

So if you were a Quaker preaching in the Quaker message or distributing Quaker tracts or booklets, you could be punished with this law, which was a brutal, miserable law the men or women, they would strip you to the waist, tie you to the back of a cart and whip you through. They would whip you in three different towns as they pulled you toward the border of Massachusetts, and would again dump dump people in the woods with bloody bare backs. She survived that more than once.

Zack Jackson  

Elizabeth survived the cart. She even watched her own teenage daughter endure the whip alongside her. The standoff was absolute. How does a sixty-year-old woman break an immovable system? She becomes a spy. More on that after the break.

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Zack Jackson  

On this show, we often talk about how everyone’s spiritual path is unique. And recently, I caught up with one of our supporters named Eva, who is no exception. Her path to Quakerism started on a bicycle in Eastern Maryland. 

Eva Paxton  

I was biking around the neighborhood, biked by the meetinghouse, and I thought, I don’t know anything about what Friends, what that means

Zack Jackson  

Before she ever walked through the doors of that meetinghouse, Eva did what most modern seekers do. Research. She started reading, watching videos and listening to this podcast among others, and the more she dug in, the more things just started to click.

Eva Paxton  

As I kept reading everything really resonated with me. It was like, Oh, I’ve always been a Quaker. I just didn’t have a word for it.

Zack Jackson  

When Eva finally did attend a meeting, she saw a need and immediately stepped up, offering to start a first day school program for the kids so that other families like hers could also find a spiritual home.

Eva Paxton  

And it’s been great. It was mostly older community, and everyone’s been very grateful for little ones coming in the door, although my meeting’s been really supportive and and trying to make sure I also get a chance to sit through a full meeting and not just lead first day school

Zack Jackson  

For Eva, that time in silent waiting worship is just absolutely vital,

Eva Paxton  

and there was just this sort of intangible quality that I couldn’t replicate at home by myself, even if I had, you know, even with the daily meditation practice, it didn’t feel the same as when I sat with a group.

Zack Jackson  

This podcast was an important part of her spiritual journey. But for a long time, she simply wasn’t in a place where she could support it financially. That recently changed for her, and she told me why she felt it was so important to step up and become a monthly supporter.

Eva Paxton  

Now, I was aware the whole time that the reason I’m able to access this great podcast for free is because other people are supporting so when I had it in my budget to do so, I set up a donation so that I could contribute every month

Zack Jackson  

For Eva. Supporting the show isn’t just about chipping in for a podcast that she enjoys. It’s about making sure the door stays open for the next person who’s looking for a spiritual home.

Eva Paxton  

The fact is that not everyone is going to be in a position where they’re able to contribute financially, and we want this platform available to them. Quakers have never been ones to evangelize and try to convert, right? It’s you go forth. You allow Your light to shine through how you live, and people are drawn to it. But obviously there are ways that we need to reach people in this day and age, and I just think that the podcast is really important for that.

Zack Jackson  

That’s why we make this podcast. We want this to be a free, accessible resource for the next person who bikes past a meetinghouse and wants to learn more, but like Eva said, we can only do that with the support of folks who are in a position to help. So if this show has been a meaningful part of your journey, please consider becoming a monthly supporter for as little as $5 a month. You can help keep this resource available to everyone, head on over to Quaker podcast.com and click Support. Thank you so very much. And now back to the show.

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Zack Jackson  

Welcome back. At this point, Elizabeth Hooton was in her sixties. She held a royal decree from the King of England. But the Puritan magistrates did not care. They whipped her. They drug her through the woods. They refused to let Quakers exist in Massachusetts. At this point, Elizabeth realized a painful truth. She simply could not win a head-on legal battle. The system was entirely rigged against her. So she changed the game. She became a political operative.

Adrian Weimer  

So the most important trip is the third trip to Boston in 1665, and on this trip, she knows very well that four royal commissioners are in town. So Charles the second has sent these royal commissioners to investigate New England and really to try and lay the groundwork for taking control of the colonies. This is a very tense time in New England history. One of the commissioners, she actually knows he was her old neighbor back in Nottinghamshire, George Cartwright. And so she goes to George Cartwright. They have a nice dinner together. She says, Listen, I can be your spy. I can I can tell you what’s going on with these horrible Puritans, and so she basically appoints herself an unofficial agent for the king, and she starts to be an informant.

Zack Jackson  

She monitored the authorities, she warned the commissioners of alleged Puritan plots, she amplified the distrust, and then she helped coordinate a massive political showdown right in the heart of Boston.

Adrian Weimer  

All the Quakers gather in Boston in 1665, at the Royal Commissioner’s request, and there’s this kind of showdown and the Quaker goal, Elizabeth Hooten, Winlock, Christiansen, many of these very savvy political Quakers, their goal is to provoke the Boston magistrates to seditious speech, and they’re successful. They provoke the magistrates to seditious speech, and the Royal commissioners are right there listening.

Zack Jackson  

It was a brilliant trap, and it worked perfectly. The Puritans lost their tempers. They openly defied the King’s men. The royal commissioners recorded every treasonous word. This explosive spectacle forced a stalemate. The Puritans were forced to back down, and the Quakers secured a critical victory.

Adrian Weimer  

and and they allowed. Tell the Quakers to set up a base in Salem and to continue that base in Salem. So there’s a lot more that happens. In the 1680s the king does different. King takes over the colonies and dissolves elected government, and lots more happens. But for the next 20 years, amazingly, things are quiet. You

Zack Jackson  

A decade passed, and Elizabeth was now in her seventies at home in England. She had done everything that was asked of her. She had earned her rest. But her work was not done. Because George Fox was planning a massive voyage to the New World.

Marcelle Martin  

George Fox had just come out of prison. His health was not very good. And this would be George Fox’s first, and I think only voyage to the New England colonies, which, because mess the New England would not accept boats with Quakers in it. They went through the West Indies and to Virginia, and then traveled north from Virginia.

Zack Jackson  

Elizabeth had taken the round trip journey across the Atlantic three times, so she knew better than anyone how hard it was, but she also felt the same prophetic fire that had compelled her for the past several decades. So once again, she said yes to the call.

Marcelle Martin  

So Elizabeth Hooten went out of this motherly impulse. I think she had always had a motherly relationship to George Fox, as I said, he was the same age as her children. She was 47 when she met this 22 year old young man. She went on this voyage because she had been before she knew how hard the journey was by ship across the ocean, and she wanted to nurse him and take care of his health. And George Fox was very sick when he arrived in the West Indies, so I imagine her help made the difference between life and death for him.

Zack Jackson  

Shortly upon arriving in Jamaica, Elizabeth Hooten also fell ill and died peacefully in 1672 she was 72 years old. She never returned to her comfortable farmhouse in Nottinghamshire, she gave her final breaths to the mission that she had been called to

Marcelle Martin  

George Fox called her a very tender woman, and that was the word tender or people with tender hearts. Is how he would describe the people who were receptive to the Quaker message at the beginning. They were people with tender hearts. They were people who were really yearning in their hearts to know God more. So it’s not just that she was willing to say hard things and be unpopular in doing it or disliked, but she was she was tender, and she was tender to him and in terms of really listening to his spiritual experience and wanting to know more about it and encouraging him to speak about it, I think it was very nurturing and tender of her to want to take that third journey across the ocean in order to help keep him alive when he wasn’t feeling well, even though it cost her her health

Zack Jackson  

Thanks to her, George Fox lived for another two decades. He wrote thick journals, and hundreds of letters. But Elizabeth left a different kind of record in the DNA of the early Quaker movement itself. She demonstrated what Jesus meant when he said, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves; so be wise as serpents, and innocent as doves”.

Marcelle Martin  

So I see her as a model of really Courage and boldness and the willingness to speak out and to condemn and criticize what’s unjust and wrong, and to see that is really connected to a spiritual faith. Spiritual faith is not just about the powerful ideas that Christ or the light is within us and can guide us directly, but it causes us to live in certain ways, and those ways we need to speak about too. And that’s that’s prophetic ministry God asking us to speak about how society needs to change. She most of her writing is writing to judges and magistrates, complaining about what’s what’s wrong and what’s illegal and what what needs to change. And she took that all the way up to public officials in England, including the king. And she wasn’t, you know, she felt like as early Quakers did, they got to speak to the King of kings. Why not speak to the human king. You.

Zack Jackson  

In many ways, 2026 is a lot like the 1660’s. We face massive inequality, the collapse of social institutions, and profound uncertainty about the future. Marcelle believes we need to follow Elizabeth’s example right now.

Marcelle Martin  

I think our world is, is we’re moving toward that, that terrible social inequality that they lived under. We’re moving back in that direction and and, you know, great social conflict, and with the pressure of climate change, you know, pressuring all of our systems toward collapse. People are having an increasing need, you know, for spiritual power. And I think you know, people are, people have always been taught and called by God, by spirit, by the light, by Christ within. And I think this time is going to bring forth a movement at least as powerful as the beginning of Quakerism. I think Quakers have a role to play in that, if we will, if we will, make it a spiritual movement, and not just a political movement, because people, people will have increasing spiritual hunger as times get more difficult, and, you know, as they get more hungry and they they have more of a sense of God in in the world and in themselves, and of less and less to lose because things are so bad, there’ll be more people will be more willing to take risks, I think, for for the truth and for the light and for society and for their children and for the future, and we’re going to need people to hear those prophetic leadings and act on them. And we’re going to need communities of people who support that support the people who are willing to step in front and risk themselves in their lives.

Zack Jackson  

It is easy to stay home. It is easy to stay warm by the fire. Elizabeth felt that same temptation. She wanted to stay on her farm. But she made a different choice. She left the farm. She chose the hard path, and she left a blueprint for the rest of us.

Marcelle Martin  

Quakers talked about the two seeds that were at war within us, you know, the seed of the light and what they called the seed of the serpent, and that and the lambs war, which they saw playing out in the world, they also understood was playing out inside each person. And there’s a part of us, and Elizabeth Hooten said, there’s a part of me that wants to be comfortable, that wants to stay at home in my farmhouse and say, I’ve done enough, let other people take up the cause. That’s the natural part of human nature. And when is it that we’re going to care enough for the seed of Christ or the light or God or truth or love within us that we will risk the comfort that we have? It’s a choice that’s still to be made within, with for each person and for groups and for society.

Zack Jackson  

Thank you for listening, and a huge thank you to our guests, Marcelle Martin and Adrian Weimer, for helping us uncover the fierce, boundary-pushing life of Elizabeth Hooton. For discussion questions and a transcript of today’s episode—make sure you check out Quakerpodcast.com. And while you’re there, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.

This episode was hosted, produced, and edited by me, Zack Jackson. Jon Watts wrote and produced the music.

Thee Quaker Podcast is a part of Thee Quaker Project. We are a nonprofit Quaker media organization dedicated to giving Quakerism a platform for the 21st Century. If you want to help us continue to spread that same Light that Elizabeth Hooten dedicated her life to, please consider becoming a monthly supporter by clicking “Support” at Quakerpodcast.com. 

And now, as you step back out into the world, may you be tender to the leadings of the Spirit. May you find the courage to walk into the lion’s den when the truth calls, and may you be a light in whatever wilderness you find yourself in.

And now, here is your daily quaker message as read by Kent Laturno

Kent Laturno  

Edward Burrough, 1659, we are not for names nor men nor titles of government, nor are we for this party nor against the other because of its name and pretense, but we are for justice and mercy and truth and peace and true freedom, that these may be exalted in our nation and. Goodness, righteousness, meekness, temperance, peace and unity with God and one with another, that these things may abound. Such a government are we to get

Zack Jackson  

Quaker wisdom in your inbox every day, go to dailyquaker.com that’s dailyquaker.com.

Hosted, produced, and edited by Zack Jackson.

Original music and sound design by Jon Watts (Listen to more of Jon’s music here.)

This season’s cover art is by Todd Drake

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