Ann Blaykling

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Ann Blaykling (fl. 1652–1708) was an early British Quaker preacher. She met George Fox in May 1652 in Sedbergh, and Fox stayed at Draw-Well Farm where Ann lived with her brother, John, and their father, Thomas Blaykling. Although her brother was a Puritan minister, John and Ann became Quaker evangelists after hearing Fox preach. Ann traveled through the southeast and as far as Cornwall to spread Quaker beliefs, and she and other early preachers were known as the First Publishers of Truth. In Cornwall she provoked a strong reaction from a woman who cried that she was "no woman, but a man." Ann was arrested several times, including imprisonment in Bury St Edmunds by order of Sir Thomas Barnardiston, and she faced charges of abusing a minister at Haverhill. She even stood up to the Baptist John Bunyan. After a period of disagreement, she returned to the Quakers and married a fellow Quaker. Her date of death is unknown.