Mary Fisher

Mary Fisher, also Mary Fisher Bayley Crosse, (c. 1623–1698) was among the first travelling Quaker ministers. She counts as one of the Valiant Sixty, the group of early itinerant preachers whose mission was to spread the spiritual message of the founder of the Quakers, George Fox. Early life Mary Fisher was born in Yorkshire, possibly at Pontefract, England. As a young woman she worked as a housemaid for Richard and Elizabeth Tomlinson at Selby, where in late December 1651 she heard the ministry to the Tomlinson family and servants given by George Fox. His message and fellowship resonated profoundly with her and as a result she became an active Quaker. Ministry and persecution In 1652, as a Quaker "Publisher of Truth", Mary Fisher publicly rebuked the vicar of Selby church in an address to his congregation after worship. She was imprisoned in York Castle and later that year she was confined there again with Elizabeth Hooton and four other Quakers, who joined in a pamphlet, False False Prophets and False Teachers Described (1652), urging people to leave the state church and draw on the Inner Light. In 1653 and 1654 she was further imprisoned at York for offences against the church in Pontefract. In December 1653, accompanied by Elizabeth Williams, Fisher walked to Cambridge as part of a Quaker drive to proselytise the south of England. There they rebuked the student theologians at Sidney Sussex College, as their Quaker aversion to organised religion extended to the colleges where ministers were trained. By order of the Mayor, they were taken to the market cross under the pretext that they were vagabonds, stripped to the waist and became the first Quakers to be publicly flogged for their ministry. In 1655, Fisher was again imprisoned for rebuking the priest of Newport Pagnell in Buckinghamshire.