Meeting in the nineteenth century was a central base for political activity, allowing individual Quakers to "distribute doctrine and ideas" supported by the centrally managed Yearly Meeting based at Devonshire House. A significant number of Quakers began to take seats in Parliament during the nineteenth century. Amongst them, Joseph Pease, John Bright, Fowell Buxton, John Ellis, Edmund Backhouse, and Charles Gilpin. Bright was a vocal opponent to the Crimean War, the Quaker peace testimony a central part of his pacifism and campaign, beginning a thirty-year tenure as the MP for Birmingham from 1857–1885. Fowell Buxton was a prolific campaigner for the abolition of slavery, founding the Anti-Slavery Society with Joseph Pease (younger) in 1823 and becoming leader of the abolition movement following William Wilberforce in 1825. Joseph Pease served as the president of the Peace Society for twelve years alongside the Quaker scientist and philanthropist William Allen. In 1818 on capital punishment Yearly Meeting was not merely preoccupied with introspective consideration of the state of the Society: it sought to awaken the public conscience. A statement in 1856 on liberty of conscience was translated into half a dozen languages and taken by deputations of concerned Friends to ecclesiastics and statesmen from Madrid to St Petersburg. Fritchley General Meeting (1868) Fritchley Meeting in Derbyshire split off from London Yearly Meeting in 1868 because they felt that London Yearly Meeting was becoming too evangelical in its outlook. They also objected to Friends in London Yearly Meeting stopping the practices of plain speech and plain dress. They therefore established Fritchley General Meeting as a self-proclaimed Yearly Meeting for Conservative Friends in Britain, which existed as a separate Yearly Meeting entirely independent of London Yearly Meeting, until 1968. Friends from Bournbrook in Birmingham also joined with Fritchley Friends for a few years, before emigrating to Saskatchewan in Canada. The separation was healed in 1968 with Fritchley Meeting rejoining London Yearly Meeting. Fritchley Quaker Meeting is now a full member of Britain Yearly Meeting, with a variety of theological outlooks amongst its membership. Twentieth century Meetings outside London In the twentieth century, Yearly Meetings started to be held outside London, namely in Leeds in 1905; in Birmingham in 1908; in Manchester in 1912; in Llandrindrod Wells in 1924; in Scarborough in 1925; in Manchester in 1926; in Bristol in 1937; In York in 1941 and in 1942. in Edinburgh in 1948. In 1945, London Yearly