Britain Yearly Meeting

The Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain, also known as Britain Yearly Meeting (and, until 1995, London Yearly Meeting), is a Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in England, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. It is the national organisation of Quakers living in Britain. Britain Yearly Meeting refers to both the religious gathering and the organisation. "Yearly Meeting", or "Yearly Meeting Gathering" are usually the names given to the annual gathering of British Quakers. Quakers in Britain is the name the organisation is commonly known by.

History

First Quaker meetings in Britain (1654–1672)

Britain Yearly Meeting, which until 1995 was known as London Yearly Meeting, grew out of various national and regional meetings of Friends in the 1650s and 1660s and has met annually in some form since 1668. The first meeting of Friends from different parts of Britain to be organised was at Balby in Yorkshire in 1656. This consisted of representatives from meetings in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire "to consider of such things as might (in the Truth's behalf) be propounded unto them; and to enquire into the cause and matter of disorder, if any be". The Quaker book of discipline, Quaker Faith and Practice recalls that:

We may think of that at Swannington in 1654 or Balby in 1656 (the postscript to whose lengthy letter of counsel is so much better known than the letter itself) or Skipton the same year, or the general meeting for the whole nation held at Beckerings Park, the Bedfordshire home of John Crook, for three days in May 1658, and attended by several thousand Friends. This in some ways might be considered the first Yearly Meeting were it not for the fact that the 1660s, through persecution and pestilence, saw breaks in annual continuity.