Gervase Bennet (born 1612) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons of England between 1653 and 1659. Bennet coined the term "Quakers" to refer to the Religious Society of Friends.
Bennet was Mayor of Derby in 1645 when there was a plague in Derby. [1] He was also a magistrate and in 1650, he and Nathaniel Barton conducted the trial of George Fox, founder of the Religious Society of Friends. Fox told the bench "Tremble at the word of the Lord", to which Bennett replied that the only "quaker" in court was him, after which the nickname Quakers to refer to members of the Society entered common parlance. [2]
In 1653, Bennet was nominated for the Barebones Parliament as representative for Derbyshire. In 1654, he was elected Member of Parliament for Derby in the First Protectorate Parliament and was returned in the Second Protectorate Parliament in 1656 and the Third Protectorate Parliament of 1659. [3]
Bennet owned estates of Littleover and Snelston. He married a coheiress of the Rowe family, and had a son, Robert. He was aged 50 in 1662 and the estate was sold in 1682. [4]
Richard Cromwell was an English statesman who was the second and last Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland and son of the first Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell.
James Nayler was an English Quaker leader. He was among the members of the Valiant Sixty, a group of early Quaker preachers and missionaries. In 1656, Nayler achieved national notoriety when he re-enacted Christ's Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem by entering Bristol on a horse. He was imprisoned and charged with blasphemy.
The English Council of State, later also known as the Protector's Privy Council, was first appointed by the Rump Parliament on 14 February 1649 after the execution of King Charles I.
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements are generally united by a belief in each human's ability to experience the light within or see "that of God in every one". Some profess a priesthood of all believers inspired by the First Epistle of Peter. They include those with evangelical, holiness, liberal, and traditional Quaker understandings of Christianity. There are also Nontheist Quakers, whose spiritual practice does not rely on the existence of God. To differing extents, the Friends avoid creeds and hierarchical structures. In 2017, there were an estimated 377,557 adult Quakers, 49% of them in Africa.
The Boston martyrs is the name given in Quaker tradition to the three English members of the Society of Friends, Marmaduke Stephenson, William Robinson and Mary Dyer, and to the Barbadian Friend William Leddra, who were condemned to death and executed by public hanging for their religious beliefs under the legislature of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1659, 1660 and 1661. Several other Friends lay under sentence of death at Boston in the same period, but had their punishments commuted to that of being whipped out of the colony from town to town.
John Weaver was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1645 and 1659. He supported the Parliamentarian side in the Civil War
John Clarke, also known as John Clark, John Clerk, and John Clerke, was an English politician and Justice of the Peace who sat in the House of Commons from 1653 through 1660, and was a colonel in the Parliamentary army between 1651 and 1659.
Sir Bennet Hoskyns, 1st Baronet (1609–1680) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons variously between 1640 and 1659.
John St Aubyn (1613–1684) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons of England in 1640. He served as a colonel in the parliamentary army in the English Civil War.
Nathaniel Hallowes (1582–1661) of Dethick, Derbyshire was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons of England from 1640 to 1653 and again in 1659. He was an active Parliamentarian during the English Civil War.
Sir Thomas Barnardiston, 1st Baronet was an English baronet, landowner, soldier and MP who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1640 and 1659. He fought on the Parliamentary side in the English Civil War.
Thomas Pury was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons variously between 1640 and 1659. He fought on the Parliamentarian side in the English Civil War.
John Stone was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1653 and 1659.
Robert Bennet (1605–1683) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1653 and 1654. He fought in the Parliamentary army in the English Civil War.
Sir John Gell, 2nd Baronet was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1654 and 1689.
Castle Salem is a fortified house near Rosscarbery, in County Cork, Ireland. The house was home to the Morris family from around 1660 until the early 1800s, and was bought in 1895 by the Daly family, descendants of whom now run it as a guest house.
Thomas Reynell of East Ogwell, Devon, was an English lawyer and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1654 and 1689.
John Swinton (1621?–1679) was a Scottish politician active during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and during the Interregnum. At the Restoration he was found guilty of treason and was imprisoned for some years before being released. In later life he became a Quaker.
Colonel James Whitlocke of Trumpington, Cambridgeshire supported the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War, and was a Member of Parliament during the Interregnum.
Abiah Darby was an English minister in the Quaker church based in Coalbrookdale, Shropshire. She was also the wife of the iron industrialist Abraham Darby. Abiah kept a journal and she sent letters which recorded the Darby family's achievements. One of her letters has been used to identify the start of the Industrial Revolution.