Alice Hayes (1657 – 1720), also Alice Smith, was an English

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...

preacher and autobiographer.

Life

Hayes was born in

Rickmansworth Rickmansworth () is a town in south-west Hertfordshire, England, located approximately north-west of central London, south-west of Watford and inside the perimeter of the M25 motorway. The town is mainly to the north of the Grand Union Canal ( ...

in 1657, and her parents are unknown. She was brought up in the church of England and indulged in behaviour, like singing, that she would later regret as a Quaker. After she became a Quaker in 1680 she was evangelical, in 1696 she attended a Church of England service, and she stopped the service by standing to question the priest. She married a farmer named Daniel Smith, who she converted to her faith. She described him as handsome and faithful, who was tender and loving. After he died she was jailed for over twelve weeks in

St Albans St Albans () is a cathedral city in Hertfordshire, England, east of Hemel Hempstead and west of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, Hatfield, north-west of London, south-west of Welwyn Garden City and south-east of Luton. St Albans was the first major ...

jail for not paying the

tithes A tithe (; from Old English: ''teogoþa'' "tenth") is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to government. Modern tithes are normally voluntary and paid in cash, cheques or via onli ...

which she objected to on religious grounds. She was the leader of the group, and their objection was that a section of the monies gathered by the Countess of Essex was to pay for the parish priest. In 1701, they stopped trying to jail her, but they gave her heavy fines. In 1707 the crops seized in lieu of money amounted to over 43 pounds. Her life is documented thanks to an autobiography that she wrote in 1708. She did not include her 1697-second marriage to Thomas Hayes, which was announced in 1697 and made her a widow in 1699. She also failed to mention that she had toured Britain, the Netherlands and Germany talking about her Quaker faith. Hayes enjoyed a greater freedom as a Quaker, as she was allowed to do things traditionally reserved for men. She had led the Quaker group who resisted the tax, and when she moved to Tottenham in 1712 she was described as a "conspicuous member" of that meeting. She died in Tottenham in 1720. Three years later her "dying sayings" were published and her spiritual biography ''A Legacy, or, Widow's Mite'' went to five reprints. No copy of the original manuscript is extant.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hayes, Alice 1657 births 1720 deaths People from Rickmansworth 18th-century British autobiographers British Quakers British women writers