The type of business dealt with by such meetings had already been established. George Fox described the general meeting at Skipton in April 1660, attended by Friends ‘out of most parts of the nation’:

And justices and captains had come to break up this meeting, but when they saw Friends’ books and accounts of collections concerning the poor, how that we did take care one county to help another, and to provide for our poor that none of them should be chargeable to their parishes, etc, and took care to help Friends beyond the seas, the justices and officers were made to confess that we did their work and Friends desired them to come and sit with them then. And so they passed away lovingly and commended Friends’ practice.