The Quakers first came to Chichester in 1655. For much of the rest of the century they were persecuted, imprisoned and sometimes killed. William Clayton and his family from the town took refuge in America, forerunners to the Quaker William Penn, Governor of Pennsylvania. Gradually they reached an accommodation with the authorities and finally gained full civil rights at the beginning of the 19th century. Their numbers declined as their status grew – their honesty and hard work made them an influential and commercially very successful group. The Friend James Hack, for example, founded the bank in East Street which is now a branch of Barclays. However Quakers were not evangelical and their exacting standards led to a diminution in numbers – in Chichester the meeting closed in 1908. It reopened though, and today has about 70 members who meet on the same site, though not in the same building, as the Meeting House of 1700.