Isolation and the Quakers: Spiritual Solitude and Godly Sociability in Early Modern Britain

This paper sets out to examines the challenge that solitude posed to a religious culture that rejected monastic cultures of seclusion, whilst emphasising a shift from mediated worship to individual faith, via the doctrines of sola scriptura, sola gratia, and sola fide (by scripture, grace, and faith ‘alone’). After exploring the long-standing trials that were recognised to accompany solitude, which accelerated after England's break from Rome in the 1530s, the paper uncovers the ways in which spiritual solitude was rendered acceptable and how men and women behaved (or were expected to behave) when they found themselves alone without the watchful eyes of their friends, families, masters, and acquaintances upon them. In particular, it considers the ways in which attitudes towards solitude were carefully weighed with the competing challenge of company. Was a faithful Christian more exemplary when they chose to retire from unprofitable companions to converse alone with God, or was their piety and Christian duty more evident when they laboured with others? In balancing these competing tensions, I employ the concept of ‘godly sociability’, to encapsulate how time spent alone dedicated to matters of the soul might translate into something profitable for the wider godly community. In so doing, the paper seeks to problematise more fully the distinction between public and private lives and early modern Christian culture and to show the ways in which spiritual withdrawal was a highly social activity that shaped religious life across the denominational spectrum.

Author Bio: Naomi Pullin is Associate Professor of Early Modern British History at the University of Warwick. She is the author of Female Friends and the Making of Transatlantic Quakerism, 1650-1750 (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and editor of Negotiating Exclusion in Early Modern England, 1550-1800 (Routledge, 2021). She has also published a number of other chapters and articles on different aspects of early Quaker culture and facets of women’s identities and experiences. She is currently working on a new monograph entitled A Social History of Solitude in Early Modern Britain, which was funded by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship.