Initially, weekly meeting took place in private houses, but in 1675, at a Monthly Meeting in the house of Thomas Moseley in the Cliffe, it was 'ordered that the next meeting be held in Friends Meeting House in Lewes if the Lord permit.' The building was completed in 1675, and in 1678 a lease was entered into by Ambrose Galloway for all that messuage or tenement building, stable and garden with all the appertainances formerly known as Puddle Wharf.‘The site, in Friars Walk, is now occupied by the East Sussex Ambulance headquarters. Some of the following extracts reveal that the Meeting House was usually occupied by a Friend. This was probably a consequence of the Second Conventicle Act, under which some meeting houses were demolished. Turning the Meeting House into a dwelling house occupied by lease gave some degree of immunity.

Quakers did not think of themselves as a sect. They believed that they were the true restoration of the early church and they expected to convert the whole world, which the power of the Spirit was bringing out of darkness into light. Therefore they did not recognise the existing churches, and, since marriage other than according to Anglican usage was not valid in statute law, they went to great trouble to establish their own careful practice.

The form of marriage was simple, but great care was taken to ensure that the couple were clear of other engagements, and that adequate publicity was given at regular meetings for worship. Then, at a weekday meeting they would declare their vows to each other and sign a certificate to which all present added their names, a practice which continues unchanged to this day. In the early days at Lewes it appears that outsiders rarely attended Quaker marriages, so from those certificates we learn many of the names associated with the meeting; there were no formal lists of members at that time. Although the church denied the validity of such marriages, they were held to be good marriages in successive common law judgements and eventually the right of Friends to perform their own ceremonies was recognised in statute law.

Burial of the dead was another urgent necessity. William Holbem was buried in his own garden at Willingdon, but Lewes Friends arranged access to the Friend‘s burial ground at Rottingdean. In 1674 a deed provided for a 'burying ground' in Lewes, but the earliest recorded burial in Friars Walk was in 1697 when land had been obtained on a 1000 year lease from John Newnham of Barcombe.

The churchwarden‘s reports for Warbleton in 1676 mention both problems:- Elias Ellis, that hath been twice excommunicated, who refuses to pay his church tax, that hath in his grounds a burial place for the Quakers, hath taken a woman to his wife without any canonical marriage that we know of. Elias Ellis later moved to the Cliffe.

This consolidation intensified, if anything, the efforts of the opposition. Certainly the existence of the Meeting House provided a focus. The townspeople of Lewes were unsure who owned, leased, or occupied the premises. When accused of holding illegal meetings, Friends often relied for their defence on such technicalities as errors in the name of the owner or lessee of the property concerned.

About the 7th month of 1675 was finished the building of the Meeting House of Friends, of Lewes, and on the 5th day of the 8th month following, William Snatt, priest, living in Lewes, accompanied with two other priests, and one Robert Smith, a tailor, came to a peaceable meeting of Friends held in their Meeting House at Lewis, William Snatt took the names of several that were there assembled, and went to Henry Shelley, called a Justice, and swore against several persons for being met together at the house of Thomas Moseley, which was utterly false (for it was not Thomas Moseley‘s house) and against a preacher, his name unknown, for which Thomas Moseley was fined twenty pounds, and the preacher twenty pounds, which fine for the preacher the Justice laid upon Nicholas Beard, of Rottingdean, ten pounds and for himself five shillings, and three pounds more upon Thomas Moseley, and upon Mary Akehurst, widow, seven pounds and five shillings, and upon Ambrose Galloway, for his wife being there, five shillings, and upon Elizabeth Shutter five shillings, and some other persons five shillings a piece.

Informers later gave information of a meeting in the house of Mary Galloway, but mark, this was the same house that Priest Snat swore but five days before to be the house of Thomas Moseley, and now he swears it to be the house of Mary Galloway, although there was no alteration concerning the said house.

On another occasion Ambrose Galloway and Mary Akehurst appealed to the Quarter Sessions. The informers were found to have perjured themselves and some Quakers had their goods restored. One informer fled Lewes, fearing prosecution for being forsworn for had Friends intended anything of revenge they had advantage enough to have them brought to suffer the loss of their ears on the pillory. They rather chose quietly to take their own again, and to forgive the informers for that wicked act, thereby shewing them an example of innocency and self denial.

In 1671 Ambrose Galloway was sued by William Kemp, of Malling, for a tithe on two acres of meadow land, a tenth of the estimated rent of three pounds a year, although Galloway considered the maximum rent to be no more than two pounds ten shillings, and said that the usual tithe was two shillings. While awaiting trial he was imprisoned, but the bailiff who briefly allowed him liberty to defend charges in the Bishop's court was greatly blamed for suffering of him to come to make his defence.

About the 5th day of the 12th month, 1677, died that notable persecutor of Friends, Edward Scripps, who made some profession of a cobbler‘s trade, and always lived meanly and poorly. As he had little power, (but what he had of his father, the Devil), he has not been taken much notice of in this book as many others have been, but for his exceeding villainies, which outpassed most in his lifetime, and his more exemplary death by the just judgement of God we shall here give some account of both, which take as follows:-

Edward Scripps several years before his death, daubed his own clothes with filth, and then came into a Meeting of Friends, thrusting and crowding himself among them on purpose to spoil their clothes, and threw dung in the face of the Friend that declared at that meeting. Not long after this action he was accused for [a crime obliterated from a Victorian transcript as unprintable], was sent to prison, and had a trial at Grinstead Assizes. He was acquitted by the oath of a bailiff that swore prejudice in the witnesses, although the Judge declared he thought him guilty.

On the 5th day of the first month of 1678, Thomas Harrison, grocer, of Lewes and constable of that town, accompanied with James Clark and Walter Joans, the old informers and persecutors, and Richard Page, mass-house warden, came to a meeting of friends held in their usual Meeting House in Lewes, to wait upon the Lord, and Nicholas Beard being then in prayer to the Lord, Clark, as his old custom was, laid violent hands upon him and dragged him about the house upon his knees in a most inhuman manner.

The first recorded reference to the Friend‘s peace testimony dates from 1680, when Thomas Robinson was taken to court for not paying two pence, the tax for maintenance of drums and colours which for conscience sake he refused to pay them. They therefore distrained from him three pounds of shoemaker‘s hemp, to the value of three shillings and six pence. John Ellis, being taxed three pence, they distrained from him a pair of stockings to the value of about fourteen pence. Thomas Moseley was also taxed three pence, which for conscience sake he refused to pay at their demand, for which they distrained from him a piece of filleting to the value of two shillings.

The peace testimony did not exist when the Society of Friends began; there is a lively debate among historians about the number of early Friends who had served in the army, and there were serious attempts to persuade George Fox to accept a commission. It is little known, although perhaps not surprising, that some early Friends did not accept this part of what became the corporate view. Newhaven port records reveal that three generations of the Galloway family were involved with the export of Wealden cannon, and did business with the Wealden iron masters. Monthly Meeting records report that friends were sent to deal with Ambrose Galloway, although the nature of the dealing and the outcome are not reported. Many years later the Galloway business fired cannon from a raft moored in the Ouse to support John Fuller when he sought election as a Tory Member of Parliament.

Friends never responded to physical violence to the aggression directed against them, but their behaviour was not above reproach. In 1681 Monthly Meeting decided that touching the difference between Mary Akehurst and Ambrose Galloway the Younger concerning her children scoffing at people on the fast days as they went to the steeplehouse, it is the sense of the Meeting that Mary has wronged Ambrose in saying he was a liar, when upon enquiry for the author it was found otherwise.

There is a note of bitterness in the following accounts of the deaths of their persecutors.

And here it may be noted as an example to wicked men, that about the year 1681, John Coppard, bailiff, who arrested Thomas Moseley, was one day in the summer time digging chalk out of the pit in the Cliffe, and it is supposed that he had been drinking. He unadvisedly struck on the chalk which hung over his head, and it fell down on him and beat out his brains. He was not seen to move after it.

Just at the beginning of 1682 James Clark went to Chichester and at his return home soon fell sick, whether occasioned by that journey or by his debauchery (to which he was much addicted), and not so much for love of company as to wine and brandy, which he would drink and guzzle down in a very inordinate manner in his own house without any company. However it pleased God to cut him off from being a further scourge to his people in this persecution, for in four or five days sickness he died, being altogether senseless for two or three days, so that he was not capable to make any will, or disposal of what he had, and in the time of sickness was visited by such as were of his company when in health. So ended his miserable life without any seeming remorse of conscience for all his wicked deeds done in the County of Sussex, as well as to most sorts of other people, as to Friends. Leading a very sottish life and being a fat man he was often like to be choked with a rising in his throat which he usually passed over by drinking a glass of sack, but now a glass of sack would not do it. It proved mortal to him so he died on the twentieth day of the eighth month of this year and the other two informers, not taking notice of the judgement of God in cutting off that wicked persecutor, still go on with their work of informing just begun before his death.