Fox did not long work single-handed; in a few years, especially from this district on and about the Penine Range, a band of preachers gathered round him whom Quakers still delight to honour. In 1654 he tells us there were sixty preaching in all parts of England and Wales. Some of his helpers had been ministers, like Francis Howgill and John Audland. But it was not taken for granted that they would still preach, unless there was the manifest call. Thus Thomas Lawson, a clergyman at Ramside near Ulverston, a man of considerable learning, seems to have relinquished preaching when he was converted by Fox. He was a great botanist, and says Sewel, "one of the most skilful herbalists in England," so he seems to have gained his livelihood by this skill and by tuition. Yet the authoress of "The Fells of Swarthmoor Hall" calls him a man of fervid eloquence, so that it was not lack of gifts that kept him from preaching, but it must have been the persuasion that he was not called to the work. So in our own day, that master of eloquence, John Bright, though a man of strong religious feeling, never preaches, in spite of the freedom which Quakerism allows. Besides clergymen and other ministers, the converts included magistrates, like Justice Hotham and Anthony Pearson, author of "The Great Case of Tithes;" and officers in the army like Col. West and Capt. Pursloe, besides gentlemen of substance and standing like I. Pennington, and scholars like Samuel Fisher and Thomas Lawson just mentioned. But among them all Fox stood chief, not only as the father of the fathers among them, but also in his firm and clear grasp of the truth, his entire devotion, his gifts of leadership, his many labours and sufferings, and his God-given success. "I notice," says a contemporary letter, "that in any company when George is present all the rest are silent;" and a joint letter by Edward Burrough and Francis Howgill says, "Oh but for one hour of his company! what a treasure it would be to us!" Even those who had held similar views before they met with him, often gained from him more clearness of view and fulness of knowledge.