William Sewel (bef. 1653 - 1720)

Born before 19 Apr 1653 in Amsterdam, Holland, Netherlands

Died 13 Mar 1720 after age 66 in Amsterdam, Holland, Netherlands

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Biography

William was a Friend (Quaker)

William Sewel, son of Jacob Williamson Sewel, free citizen and surgeon of Amsterdam, and Judith Zinspenning was baptized there 13 Apr 1653^[1]

His mother had joined the Society of Friends in 1657 after hearing William Ames, became a Quaker minister, and authored a number of works in Dutch which were translated into English. Both parents died when William was young and he was raised by an uncle. He was proficient in Latin by the age of eight and pursued his linguistic studies while being apprenticed to a weaver.^[2] At the age of fourteen he spent ten months in England visiting friends of his mother then returned to Holland where he worked as a translator and wrote for newspapers as well as operating his own periodical. William Penn asked Sewel to become the master of the Quaker school at Bristol, an invitation which Sewel declined.

Today, Sewel is perhaps best known as the author of The History of the Rise, Increase and Progress of the Christian People called Quakers. The work was twenty-five years in preparation and first appeared in Dutch in 1717 with the English first edition published in London in 1722 and the first American edition in Philadelphia in 1728. It may be read that the work was largely undertaken to correct errors in the work of the German Gerard Croese's Historia Quakeriana (Amsterdam, 1695).

Sewel's work was based on extensive correspondence, George Fox's Journal, the Earl of Clarendon's Rebellion and Ludlow's Memoirs. Its accuracy has never been contested and it remains a classic authority on early Quakerdom.

Major Works

• 1691 - A Large Dictionary of English-Dutch
• 1700 - A Compendious Guide to the Low Dutch Language (English and Dutch)
• 1715 - Oratio in Luxum (Latin and Dutch)
• 1717 - The History of the Rise, Increase and Progress of the Christian People called Quakers

Additionally, Sewel's editing and translation work from numerous languages is so exhaustive that the reader is referred to the fairly complete list found in the ODNB.

Sources

1. ↑ Wilhelm Hubben, [Willem Sewel of Amsterdam, 1653-1720: The First Quaker Historian of Quakerism & William Penn and the Dutch Quaker Migration to Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College Monographs on Quaker History, Number One. Swarthmore, Pennsylvania: Swarthmore College, 1933.
2. ↑ Stephen, Sir Leslie, ed. Dictionary of National Biography, 1921–1922. London, England: Oxford University Press, 1921–1922. 17:1221-23