Mezzotint print by Isaac Beckett,
after Egbert van Heemskerck
The British Museum
Mary Emma Sercombe's (1859-1922) maternal ancestors the Hesters were Quakers, as was Mary Emma herself. This print was published when the Hesters, whose bloodline can be traced back to 1651, were practising Quakers.
In the second half of the seventeenth century Quakers had a dubious reputation as an extreme non-conformist sect. They were marked out by their clothes and their strange services, and were subject to civil penalties for refusing to take the oath of allegiance or pay tithes. They were active advocates for the abolition of human slavery and their modern respectability came much later. Of the several paintings that Heemskerk made of them, four were turned into prints, all with the same title, The Quakers Meeting.