Lilias Skene

From 1649 to 1671 he held various offices in Aberdeen, including Treasurer of the Town Council, Dean of Guild, Baillie and a leading man in the church courts.

[2] Moving to Aberdeen to live with her husband, between 1647 and 1669 the couple had ten children, their oldest surviving son being John Skene (c.1649–1690) who was to become Deputy Governor of West Jersey from 1684 to 1687.

Of this time she wrote, 'It is very well known to all that lived in the place where I sojourned, I was none who conversed with them, I was never at one of their meetings, I never read one of their books', yet she experienced 'that thing the school-men call Immediat Objective Revelation'.

In the letter she mentioned her own preaching 'at severall seasons and in diverse maners I have witnessed' while also condemning the imprisoning of 'honest men that have families wives and children ... in those cold nasty stinking holes where ye have shutt them up, who have been as neatly handled and tenderly educated and as usefull in their generation as any amongst you'.

[1] In 1676 Robert Barclay persuaded Skene to write to Elisabeth of the Palatinate (1618–1680), the Calvinist cousin of the Stuart kings, in an attempt to convert her.

[6] Skene corresponded with the princess and her companion, Countess Anna Maria van Hoorn, and was invited to visit them at Herford Abbey in Westphalia, where Elisabeth was the Abbess.

[1][2] Today there is a plaque dedicated to Lilias Skene on a wall near the entrance of the Crown Street Meeting house in Aberdeen in addition to an information board about her at the Tollhouse were the Quaker men were imprisoned during her lifetime.