Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

SÜNNE JUTERCZENKA
climate in the Netherlands, mechanisms regulating business activities,
which had developed in England under the pressure of persecution,
were introduced there also. The correspondence system which
connected Quakers in London with the remoter regions of the King -
dom now expanded across the Channel. The names of European cor -
respondents (for example, that of Jan Claus in Amsterdam) entered
the same lists as those of English county correspondents, and the
Continental Quakers regularly appeared in the records of the London
Meeting for Sufferings. 86 British and Continental Quakers began to
visit each other’s Yearly Meetings, and the Continental Yearly Meet -
ings sent an annual ‘epistle’ to London, reporting on the well-being
of the local communities and on important events in Germany and
the Dutch Republic. The records in London only rarely contain
instances of oppression in the Netherlands, but in Friesland and the
German territories, persecution was rife. As soon as the meeting struc -
ture had been transferred to the Continent, therefore, the Month ly
Meetings acted in the same way as in England, extending support
and sometimes soliciting financial help from London, and the
Meeting for Sufferings recorded instances of persecution on the
Continent in the same way as those within Britain. 87 Thus in 1692
Nicholas Rust, a cobbler who lived in Danzig, applied to the Meeting
for Sufferings because he was no longer able ‘to get his Bread by reason
of ye Customes of the Company of y.t Trade there, And an Offer
being made to him by some P[er]sons of Note att Dantzick, to Joyn in
a New Imploye in Buying and Selling by Commission, and stands in
Need of Some Assistance in order thereto’. 88 The meeting approved
of Rust’s change in occupation and advanced twenty Pounds ‘to -
wards Settleing him in the said Imploye’. 89 As long as regular meetings
existed on the Continent, the Meeting for Sufferings continued
to support co-religionists in need of help with their professional
training or unable to earn a living. As late as 1727 it recorded a
request for contributions towards paying ‘800 florins for the board-
86 LSF, YM 1, 121.
87 See Joseph Besse, Collection of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers, 2
vols. (London, 1753), which has separate chapters on Europe and Asia,
Hungary and Austria, the German territories, and the Dutch provinces.
88 LSF, MS 8, 20 Mar. 1692, 91.
89 Ibid.
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