Hello Diane,

So far I have read:

The second period of quakerism - Briathwaite

Select historical memoirs ... - Hodgson

A Letter to J. Wilkinson on some statements contained in his letter of resignation ... Samuel Tuke

George Fox - Hodgson

Primitivism, Radicalism, and the Lamb's War - Underwood

I've also read a couple books by Pink Dandelion that briefly mention the breach.  

I really keen to read William Roger's "Christian Quaker"

Also, I came across this wonderful website that quotes Fox from his Journal writing in part:

"All that deny regulations without prescriptions may as well deny all the scriptures, which were given forth by the power and spirit of God. For do they not prescribe how men should walk towards God and man, both in the Old Testament and in the New? Yes, from the very first promise of Christ in Genesis, what people ought to believe and trust in; and all along until you come to the prophets?"

I'm surprised those who labor against me haven't used this reference. It is informative to me as it represents a point of departure between Fox and myself.

Through these and various other studies I am learning that Penington himself had issues with Fox authoritarianism later in life. 

Thank you for the reference to Rosemary More's work. I look forward to reading it.

Rosemary Moore's book addresses the first phase of early Quakerism.  Apparently, she is working on another book, which will focus on the second phase of the early period.

There was a lot of fallout from the assertion of control over the radicals.  No doubt, it helped to keep the Quaker movement from going the way of Ranterism.  On the other hand, it fostered excessive repression of prophetic ministry, as shown in Samuel Bownas's handbook for Quaker ministers.  I take this latter matter up in my forthcoming essay on Ann Branson, which is scheduled to appear in the Fall, 2016, issue of *Quaker History*.

Diane, those were the two references I was going to check first.  Another possible source would be Larry Ingle's iconoclastic biography of George Fox (*First Among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism*?).

It is important to understand that "early Quakerism" was not a seamless web.  Scholars nowadays divide the early period into two parts: approximately 1840-1860 and 1860-1880.  George Fox's outlook apparently grew much more conservative as he and his faction moved to keep the Society of Friends from falling apart under the influence of radical prophets like James Nayler, Martha Simmonds and John Perrot.  This phase falls into the sociological category of "routinization of charisma," which involved reining in the spirit of free prophecy through control and discipline by the leadership.  Presumably, Story and Wilkinson fit into this picture somewhere.