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Car Colston's bigoted GP cum JP
Soon after 1647 John Fox (1624–91), the founder of the Society of Friends – most commonly known as 'Quakers', began to establish a congregation in Mansfield. As awareness of the Quakers grew – Fox was a prolific travelling preacher – then there were Quakers in the Vale too during the late 1640s.
Source: researchframeworks.org/emherf/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2018/11/8.NotPM_.pdf
Robert Thoroton.
Living at the same time was Robert Thoroton (1623–78), now best-remembered as an antiquarian. As an adult Thoroton lived in Car Colston where he was the local doctor. And Justice of the Peace. But, in his role as a magistrate, he took every opportunity to persecute the Quakers and frequently imposed heavy fines on poor members of their faith, often depriving them of their tools used to earn a living.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Thoroton
To get an idea of how vindicative such persecution was in the 1660s to 1680s read this account of the Fox family in Wymeswold, just to the south-west of the Vale.
Such abuses of power led to the Toleration Act of 1689 which granted most non-conformists the freedom to worship publicly and establish their own places of worship (provided they registered the premises and met certain conditions). However by the early eighteenth century all non-conformists appear to have been in decline until the rise of Methodism in the 1740s.
From the 1840s onwards Wesleyan Methodists, Baptists and Primitive Methodists constructed chapels in many of the bigger villages of the Vale, although few remain in use as places of worship.
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