Capturing the imagination: Lesley Chandler on some Cornish Quaker connections

‘It was from imprisonment in Launceston that some of George Fox’s most inspiring words were dictated.’

by Lesley Chandler 15th August 2025

Last year for the 400th anniversary of George Fox’s birth, Cornwall Friends were joined by Devon Friends and others in Launceston to celebrate Fox’s life. We visited Doomsdale, the name of the gaol at Launceston Castle where George and other early Friends were incarcerated. It was a nasty stinking place where few ever came out again, full of filthy excrement. Eighty years before Fox had been imprisoned there, Cuthbert Mayne a notable Catholic prisoner of conscience, had been taken from Doomsdale to be hanged, drawn and quartered in Launceston marketplace, for refusing to acknowledge Elizabeth as head of the English Church.