William Charles Braithwaite (23 December 1862 – 28 January 1922) was a British

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

, specialising in the early history of the

Society of Friends Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...

(Quakers). Braithwaite was born on 23 December 1862, the son of

Joseph Bevan Braithwaite Joseph Bevan Braithwaite (21 June 1818 – 15 November 1905) was a conservative, evangelical English Quaker minister. In 1887, he drafted the Quaker Richmond Declaration which stated, among other things, that the Bible was of greater authority t ...

(1818–1905) and Martha Gillett (1823–1895).William Charles Braithwaite (I16368)
/ref> One of his eight siblings was stockbroker

(1855–1934). He attended Oliver's Mount School, Scarborough, and University College London.‘BRAITHWAITE, William Charles’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 200
accessed 1 Aug 2012
/ref> Upon the death of

John Wilhelm Rowntree John Wilhelm Rowntree (4 September 1868 – 9 March 1905) was a chocolate and confectionery manufacturer and Quaker religious activist and reformer.ODNB article by Edward H. Milligan, ‘Rowntree, John Wilhelm (1868–1905)�accessed 20 Janua ...

in 1905, Rufus Jones invited Braithwaite to write the early history of the

. Rowntree and Jones had set out in 1897 to write a "comprehensive history of Quakerism", but the former died before this was possible. As a result, it is Braithwaite who wrote the two classic histories which popularised this research; ''The Beginnings of Quakerism'' in 1912, and ''The Second Period of Quakerism'' in 1919. On 1 January 1922 he received an honorary doctorate in Theology from the University of Marburg. In 1955 F. J. Smithen stated that ''The Beginnings of Quakerism'' was "still regarded as the standard work on the rise and early fortunes of the Quaker movement".The Journal of Ecclesiastical History (1956), 7 : pp 126-127 In 1909, Braithwaite gave the second

Swarthmore Lecture Swarthmore Lecture is one of a series of lectures, started in 1908, addressed to Britain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The preface to the very first lecture explains the purpose of the series. “This book is t ...

, entitled "Spiritual Guidance in the experience of the Society of Friends". He married Janet Morland, and his son was the philosopher

Richard Bevan Braithwaite Richard Bevan Braithwaite (15 January 1900 – 21 April 1990) was an English philosopher who specialized in the philosophy of science, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. Life Braithwaite was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, son of the ...

Published works

*''Red Letter Days; a Verse Calendar'' (1907) *''The Beginnings of Quakerism'' (1912) *''The Message and Mission of Quakerism'' (1912) (with Henry Theodore Hodgkin (1877-1933)) *''Foundations of National Greatness'' (1915) *''The Second Period of Quakerism'' (1919) *''Spiritual Guidance in the Experience of the Society of Friends'' (

1909) *''The penal laws affecting early Friends in England''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Braithwaite 1862 births 1922 deaths British Quakers Historians of Quakerism Alumni of University College London