supped at seven, and went to bed at ten. He and his wife, his children, and servants assembled every morning for worship, and at eleven they had a second meeting for reading the Bible and other religious books, especially "The Martyrology,”—of John Foxe, I suppose. At six in the evening they met together again for divine service. The servants were required after supper to account for what they had done during the day, and to receive orders for the morrow. Rules laid down for the inmates of the house were very minute, descending even to the regulation of the voice; "loud discourse and troublesome noise" being strictly forbidden. In case of any dispute, the sun was not to go down upon their wrath. Worship at meeting on First Day and at the appointed week hour was enjoined; nobody was to be absent except from ill health or some unavoidable engagement.1

A pleasant picture may be painted of this Quaker home down amongst the hills and tree-dotted meadows of Sussex; and it may be fitly hung up as a companion sketch to that beautiful one of Broad Oak, near Whitchurch, where Philip Henry lived such a holy life after his ejectment.

1 See Clarkson's "Life of Penn," vol. ii. p. 350.

:

CHAPTER IX.

POLITICAL ACTION.

HATEVER might be the sufferings of Friends

abroad, they were surpassed by sufferings of Friends at home. We have witnessed the imprisonment of George Fox at Worcester, Thomas Ellwood in Newgate, and of William Penn himself in the same gaol and in the Tower of London. These, however, are only a few instances of what prevailed to a wide extent. The whipping-post, the parish stocks, peltings by infuriated mobs, and impositions of enormous fines these were cruelties inflicted on Quakers year by year. Different statutes were brought to bear upon them, the Conventicle Act especially; and where no specific law could be produced, it was easy to require the oath of allegiance, which exposed them at once to six months' imprisonment. Stories were told of meetings disturbed by drums and fiddles, of women having their hoods and scarfs torn off, and of little boys being beaten or struck with a cat-o'-ninetails. Before the Revolution, Quakers declared that there had been of late above fifteen hundred of them in prison, of whom thirteen hundred and fifty-three remained still in bonds. Three hundred and fifty had died in gaol since 1660; and altogether, according to Penn's calculation, more than five thousand

perished for the sake of religion.

Accurate statistics are always difficult to get at; they were particularly so at that time. Hence it is probable there is exaggeration in these statements; but it is quite certain the amount of suffering endured by Friends in the reigns of Charles II. and James II. must have been tremendously great. The sufferers kept a careful record of many particular instances, and laid it down. as a rule of their Society, that "nothing of the memorial of the blood and cruel sufferings of your brethren be lost, which may stand as a testimony against the murdering spirits of the world; and be to the praise of the Lord's everlasting power in the ages to come, who supported and upheld His, in such hardships and cruelty." The rule appears in their "Canons and Institutions," published in 1669; and accordingly these "accounts are preserved in grim and ponderous folios among the records of the Society, where they stand as if ready for the Judgment Day."2

When Penn returned from the Continent in 1677, we find him at first engaged at Bristol in a dispute respecting Church discipline, there being a difference of opinion on that subject amongst the Quakers, some contending for "Canons and Institutions," and others wishing that particulars of conduct should be left to the teaching of the Spirit. Penn advocated the maintenance of order. But the matter which occupied most of his attention in the winter of 1677-8 was the pressure of those sufferings I have this moment

1 Macintosh's "Hist. of the Revolution," p. 159. Neal's "Hist. of the Puritans," vol. iv. pp. 552, 554.

2 Barclay's "Inner Life of Religious Societies," etc., p. 398.

noticed. In that winter the persecution of Quakers was increased by an excitement respecting Roman Catholics, who were deemed the enemies of their country, as well as children of the Mother of Harlots. What Papists and Quakers could have to do with one another, most people now must wonder; but in those days it was very common to regard Quakers as Jesuits in disguise. The notion began under the Commonwealth. It appears in absurdly written tracts of the period. It crops up in all sorts of letters and documents. There was "a perfect craze" on the subject. Penn sought the relief of his people from this hardship; and whilst a Bill was before Parliament to distinguish Protestant from Popish Dissenters, and to protect the former from the Test Act, passed against the latter, he endeavoured to procure a clause in favour of Friends. An oath was proposed for Dissenters in general as a shield against the Test Law; but as Quakers could not take any kind of oath, such a provision was unavailable for them. But though they could not swear, they could affirm, and that they were willing to do. Accordingly, a petition was offered by them to that effect, and William Penn had permission to support it before a Committee of the Commons in the month of March, 1678.

"That," he said, "which giveth me a more than ordinary right to speak at this time and in this place, is the great abuse which I have received above any other of my profession; for of a long time I have not only been supposed a Papist, but a Seminary, a Jesuit, an emissary of Rome, and in pay from the Pope; a man dedicating my endeavours to the in

terest and advancements of that party. Nor hath this been the report of the rabble, but the jealousy and insinuation of persons otherwise sober and discreet. Nay, some zealots for the Protestant religion have been so far gone in this mistake, as not only to think i of us and decline our conversation, but to take courage to themselves to prosecute us for a sort of concealed Papists; and the truth is that, what with one thing and what with another, we have been as the woolsacks and common whipping-stock of the kingdom; all laws have been let loose upon us, as if the design were not to reform but to destroy us; and this not for what we are, but for what we are not. It is hard that we must thus bear the stripes of another interest, and be their proxy in punishment; but it is worse that some men can place themselves in such a sort of administration. But mark, I would not be mistaken. I am far from thinking it fit, because I exclaim against the injustice of whipping Quakers for Papists, that Papists should be whipped for their consciences. No; for though the hand pretended to be lifted up against them hath, I know not by what discretion, lighted heavily upon us, and we complain, yet we do not mean that any should take a fresh aim at them, or that they should come in our room, for we must give the liberty we ask, and cannot be false to our principles, though it were to relieve ourselves; for we have goodwill to all men, and would have none suffer for a truly sober and conscientious dissent on any hand. And I humbly take leave to add, that those methods against persons so qualified do not seem to me to be convincing, or indeed adequate to the reason of mankind; but this I submit to your