Thomas Ellwood

ELLWOOD, Thomas. b. Crowell, near Chinnor, Oxfordshire, 1639 (baptized 15 October); d. Amersham, Buckinghamshire, 1 May 1713. He was born into a Puritan family which moved to London during the Civil War to support the Parliamentary cause. In 1659 Ellwood heard two Quakers preach at Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, and was so impressed that he became one of the early Friends. Thereafter his life was dominated by the joys of being a Quaker (friendships, such as that with the Pennington family, to whom he acted as a tutor), and the risks attendant on it (imprisonment and persecution). He was imprisoned on a number of occasions: for a short time he was a reader to the blind John Milton*, and...