Oddlet: George Fox · 1 min read
Nov 2, 2026
Hat Honour
George Fox would not remove his hat for any man alive, which by 1655 had placed a piece of felt between him and Oliver Cromwell.
George Fox, born 1624 in Drayton-in-the-Clay to a weaver known locally as Righteous Christer, was apprenticed to a shoemaker who kept sheep. In 1647 he heard an inward voice and began preaching. Contemporaries described a sturdy figure in leather breeches with hair to his shoulders, under a broad-brimmed hat.
The hat was the problem.
Fox would not remove it for anyone alive. Not for shopkeepers, not for magistrates, not for kings. The Lord, he said, had forbidden it. This put a great deal of English legal weight on a piece of felt.
At Lancaster Assizes in 1664, Judge Twisden asked whether Fox had come into court with his hat on. Fox, whose hat was on, replied that the hat was not the honour that comes from God. Twisden gave him roughly two and a half years. Eight years earlier at Launceston, Chief Justice Glynn had snapped that he did not carry his law books on his back; Fox quoted Daniel back at him and did nine weeks in a Cornish gaol.
In March 1655 Fox was brought under guard to Whitehall to meet Oliver Cromwell, who had six years earlier signed a warrant for the head of Charles I. Fox kept his hat on.
At parting, Cromwell took him by the hand, wept, and asked him to come again. An hour together, he said, would bring them nearer to one another.
Fox didn't.
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- Wikipedia: George Fox — Comprehensive biographical outline: dates, imprisonment chronology, meetings with Cromwell, the 1650 Derby coining of 'Quaker,' marriage to Margaret Fell 1669, Journal publication 1694 by Ellwood with Penn's preface.
- Encyclopedia Britannica summary of George Fox — Confirms birth July 1624 Drayton-in-the-Clay Leicestershire, death 13 January 1691 London, weaver's son, left home at 18, founded Society of Friends, doctrine of inward light.
- Christian Classics Ethereal Library: Fox's Journal — Primary source — Fox's own text of the 1647 revelation and hat conflicts.
- The Journal of George Fox, Vol. 1 (Project Gutenberg) — Primary source: Nottingham steeple-house, Lichfield barefoot cry, Derby / Bennet, first hat prosecutions.
- The Journal of George Fox, Vol. 2 (Project Gutenberg) — Primary source: Launceston Assizes with Chief Justice Glynn, 1664 Lancaster trial with Judge Twisden, Charles II petition.
- Littell's Living Age: The Quaker's Hat (1876)
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