This history first appeared in book form in 1984, the bi-centenary year of Lewes Friends Meeting House, as a tribute to the men and women who established and maintained Quaker testimonies in the town. This edition adds new material which has since come to my notice, and will include an index and references for the main sources.

I am pleased to acknowledge the assistance of many people with this work. These include the staff of the East Sussex County Records Office, Lewes Public Library, and the librarians of Friends House in London, Malcolm Thomas and Edward Milligan. James Hodson allowed me to use an essay which he wrote as part of his undergraduate work. Without the genealogy produced by John Baily I could not have disentangled the complex relationships of the Rickman family. The University of Sussex gave me time and computer facilities for the collation of material. Sharon Gretton and my wife, Diana, transcribed and indexed much larger quantities of information than is apparent from the size of this book.

Leslie Blomfield, Joy Anderson and C Walter Hodges provided illustrations. Other inset illustrations which are not credited individually are from histories of Lewes by Horsfield and Lower. Tom Reeves provided prints from negatives taken by Edward Reeves of Lewes.

I am grateful to the owners of copyright material for permission to reproduce it. The quotations in the account of the life of Thomas Hodgkin are taken from Curator of the Dead: Thomas Hodgkin 1798-1866 by Michael Rose, published by Peter Owen, London, in 1981. Some of the accounts of the childhood of Maude Robinson are reproduced from the Sussex County Magazine by permission of T R Beckett Ltd.

Grants and donations to assist with the publication costs of the first edition were received from many sources, including the Barrow and Geraldine S Cadbury Trusts. I am grateful to them all, and hope that this revised publication will meet with their approval.

This book is dedicated to the members of the Religious Society of Friends at Lewes. It is on their faithfulness, over more than three centuries, that the existence of Lewes Meeting depends. The mode of business and worship are essentially unchanged since the beginning, but they still meet the needs of the present day, and the testimonies to peace, and to 'that of God in every one' are now more relevant than ever before.