Caton, William (DNB00)
| ←Catnach, James | Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 09 Caton, William by |
Cattermole, George→ |
CATON, WILLIAM (1636–1665), quaker, was probably a near relation of Margaret Askew, afterwards wife of Thomas Fell, vice-chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. At the age of fourteen he was taken by his father to the judge's house at Swarthmore, near Ulverston, to be educated by a kinsman who was then tutor to the Fell family. The boy was made a companion to the judge's eldest son, and was sent with him to a school at Hawkshead. In 1652 George Fox paid his first visit to Swarthmore Hall, and Caton embraced quakerism. He now refused to study on the ground of its being a worldly occupation, and Margaret Fell employed him at Swarthmore to teach her younger children and act as her secretary. When he was about eighteen, Caton was chosen one of the quaker preachers for the district of which Swarthmore was the centre, and in his ‘Journal’ he relates that he was often ‘beaten, buffetted, stocked, and stoned’ by the people of the places in which he attempted to preach. In 1654 he left Swarthmore in order to become an itinerant preacher. Towards the end of the year he was joined by John Stubbs, with whom he proceeded to Maidstone. Here they were both sent to the house of correction and harshly treated, when, the only charge against them being that of preaching, the magistrates were compelled to release them (a
