Kendal: Cumbria Record Office MS WDFC/FI/12: Minute book of Kendal Monthly and Quarterly Meetings

John Blaykling (1625–1705), son of Thomas Blaykling of Draw-Well, on the east side of Howgill (the valley running to the east of Firbank Fell), near Sedbergh. The First Publishers of Truth¹ records that Draw-Well was the house at which George Fox stayed after the Whitsun Wednesday fair in Sedbergh, and departed from thence with John to Firbank Chapel on Firbank Fell [page 243]. Blaykling travelled extensively, preached and was imprisoned in York and Tynemouth castle. His wife Eleanor and his sister Ann Blaykling were also convinced and Ann travelled in south east England. In 1676, Draw-Well was the site of the meeting between Friends and the Separatists, John Wilkinson and John Story. John Blaykling was co-author of Antichristian Treachery Discovered and Its Way Block’d Up (1686), an answer to William Rogers’ tract The Christian Quaker (1680), and the views of Story and Wilkinson.

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1.    The First Publishers of Truth: Being Early Records (now first printed) of the introduction of Quakerism into the Counties of England and Wales edited Norman Penney with an Introduction by Thomas Hodgkin (London: Headley Brothers, 1907).   See 'Other Sources' on Draw-well Index page.     Return