Mary Fisher (missionary)

Mary Fisher, also Mary Fisher Bayley Crosse, (c.1623 – 1698) was one of the first travelling Quaker ministers. She was one of the Valiant Sixty, the group of early itinerant Quaker preachers whose mission was to spread the spiritual message of the founder of the Quakers, George Fox.

Mary Fisher was born in north Yorkshire, possibly at Pontefract, England. As a young woman she worked as a housemaid for Richard and Elizabeth Tomlinson in their household at Selby, where in late December 1651 she heard the ministry to the Tomlinson family and servants given by George Fox. His message and fellowship resonated profoundly with her and as a result she became an active Quaker.

In 1652, as a Quaker "Publisher of Truth", Mary Fisher publicly rebuked the vicar of Selby church in an address to his congregation after worship. She was imprisoned in York Castle and later that year she was confined there again with five other Quakers. Together they issued a pamphlet, False Teachers and False Prophets Described. In 1653 and 1654 she was further imprisoned at York for offences against the church in Pontefract.

In December 1653, accompanied by Elizabeth Williams, Fisher walked to Cambridge as part of the Quaker drive to proselytise the south of England. There they rebuked the student theologians at Sidney Sussex College as their Quaker aversion to organised religion also extended to the colleges where ministers were trained. On the order of the Mayor they were taken to the market cross under the pretext that they were vagabonds, stripped to the waist and flogged. They were the first Quakers to be publicly flogged for their ministry.

In 1655, Fisher was again imprisoned for rebuking the 'priest' of Newport Pagnell in Buckinghamshire.

In 1655, Fisher and another Quaker preacher, Ann Austin, voyaged to the New World to spread the Quaker message there. They were subsidised in their mission by Quaker funds. They first sailed to Barbados in the Caribbean, where they were well received and where they converted the lieutenant governor of the island to Quakerism.

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