wholly discontinued. A building at Ratcliffe, belonging to this society, was subjected to the like violence with that of Horsleydown, and on the 2d of September, without any legal process, was demolished. On that day and the night following, twelve cartloads of doors, windows, and floors, with other materials, were carried away. Some of the materials were sold on the spot for money and strong drink. Thus grievous sufferings, exorbitant spoil, and illegal depredation, were the lot of an inoffensive and peaceable class of subjects. These evils were inflicted by those whose duty it was to protect the rights and property of the subject, even by the officers under government*.

While these calamities awaited the general body of this people on account of their conscientious profession, it is to be supposed, that the more active and distinguished members of the society were peculiar marks for prejudice and malignity. Of this the history of the Quakers furnishes many examples, which we must not pass over unnoticed, though our limits will not allow us to go into a minute detail of each case.

George Fox, eminent for his activity and zeal in disseminating his principles, was among the first who, after the restoration of Charles II. and for some years, felt the rage of bigotry. In 1660 he was apprehended by a warrant from Mr. Henry Porter, the mayor of Lancaster, at the house of Margaret Fell at Swaithmore, and carried to Ulverston, where he was guarded for the night by fifteen or sixteen men, some of whom kept sentry at the chimney, for fear he should escape by that passage; "so darkened," observes the historian, "were they by superstitious imaginations." Next morning he was escorted, with abusive and contumelious treatment, to Lancaster, and brought before the mayor, who committed him to prison; refused bail; and denied him a copy of the mittimus. Two friends having however been permitted to read it, he published an immediate reply to the charges, which they reported to him it contained. Application was made to the king for a habeas corpus to remove him to London, and was obtained. In consequence of this writ, though his persecutors, for two months, obstructed the operation of it, he presented himself in the court of King's-bench; the justices, being dispassionate and favourable, caused the sheriff's return of the habeas corpus to be laid before the king, who, when Fox had suffered for more than twenty weeks an unjust and severe imprisonment, gave directions for his release. His enemies, on his obtaining his liberty, were filled with vexation and fear, as they were conscious of the illegality of their proceedings; and he was advised, by some in authority, to make the mayor and the rest examples: but he meekly replied, "I shall leave them to the Lord; if he forgive them, I shall trouble myself no farther about them."

Gough, vol. 2. p. 341-352.

+Gough's History, vol. 1. 432-439.

On occasion of rumours of a conspiracy set on foot in the north among the republicans and separatists, warrants were again issued out, in 1663, to apprehend George Fox; as he was on his tour through the northern counties, he was not met with; but at length, finding that they continued their pursuit, he resolved to stand his ground, and was apprehended; when no evidence could be produced to justify committing him on the pretended plot, thè justices contented themselves with his engaging to appear at the sessions: he appeared at it, but finding no grounds to effect their purpose, either upon the plot, the plot, or the act against meetings, they committed him, for refusing the oath of allegiance, to a very incommodious room in Lancaster-castle, where he was kept close prisoner till after the spring assizes 1665; after that he was removed to Scarborough-castle, where he was detained upwards of a year longer; when finding means to have his case laid before the king, he soon after obtained his release, having suffered an arbitrary and very rigorous imprisonment of more than three years*. At Lancaster, he was locked up in a smoky tower, sometimes so filled with smoke that a burning candle was scarcely visiblet, and so open as to admit the rain in upon his bed. The room allotted to him in Scarborough-castle was little better, if not worse; and when, at his own expense, he had made it tolerable, he was removed into another room, without chimney or fire-place, and so open to the sea-side, that the rain, violently driven by the wind, poured into the room. A sentinel was placed at his door few or none of his friends were permitted to visit him, or even to bring him food; but numbers of others were admitted in to gaze upon him, or dispute with him. His removal from one prison to another, when he was in a very weak condition, was attended with a treatment in many respects uncivil and rude. To the rigour and hardships of his imprisonment were added, to terrify him, the frequent menaces of his keepers. The deputy-governor once told him, "that the king, knowing that he had a great interest in the people, had sent him thither, that if there should be any stirring in the nation, they should hang him over the wall." He replied to this menace, "If that was what they desired, and it was permitted them, he was ready, for he never feared death or sufferings in his life; but was known to be an innocent peaceable man, free from stirrings and plottings, and one that sought the good of all men." His patience surmounted the hardships to which he was exposed; and his innocence pleading in his favour, his keepers at length relaxed their severity, and treated him with favour and respect. When, on obtaining his release, Mr. Fox offered an acknowledgment for his late civility and kindness to the governor of Scarborough-castle, he refused it; adding, "whatever good he could do him or his friends, he

Gough's History, vol. 2. p. 25-29.
VOL. III.

FF

+ Ibid. p. 29.

Ibid. p. 152, 153

;

would do it, and never do them any hurt." His consequent conduct made good this promise, for it was ever favourable to the Quakers*.

Mrs. Margaret Fell, who had been a widow about two years, in 1660 was, in a degree, involved in the severe proceedings against Fox; for, that they might lay hold of him, they forcibly entered and searched her house; of this she complained in an appeal to the public, as an injury offered to herself, and a violation of the liberty of the subjectt. In the year 1663, this lady, the widow of a judge and a woman of estate, was cited before the justices, and questioned about keeping meetings at her house, and the oath of allegiance was tendered to her; on which she expostulated with them, that as "they knew she could not swear, why should they send for her from her own house and her lawful affairs to insnare her?" adding, "What have I done?" This remonstrance, for the instant, impressed their minds, and they declared they would not urge the oath, if she would not keep meetings at her house. To this proposal she magnanimously replied, "she would not deny her faith and principles for any thing they could do against her, and while it should please the Lord to let her have a house, she would endeavour to worship him in it." On this the oath was tendered, and on her refusal, she was committed to Lancaster-castle, a prison then crowded with numbers of the same profession, and the state of which heightened the evil of confinement. Here she was detained till next years.

When, in the month of August, she was, at the assizes, brought to her trial on the same account, she persevered in refusing the oath, and answered the judge with good sense and pious intrepidity. Her counsel was admitted to plead an arrest of judgment, after the jury gave a verdict against her, and found several errors in the indictment, but they were not admitted by the judge, and sentence of premunire was passed upon her. She remained in prison twenty months, before she could obtain liberty to go to her own house, which she procured for a little time, and returned to prison again, where she continued about four years, till released by an order of the king and council [.

Another of the society of Quakers, whose sufferings are recorded in a distinct narrative, was their noted preacher, Mr. Francis Howgill. This respectable man, as he was in the marketplace at Kendal on his lawful business, was summoned before the magistrates then sitting in a tavern; who tendered him the oath of allegiance, and, on his conscientious refusal of it, committed

+ Ibid. vol. 1. p. 435, 436.

* Gough, vol, 2. p. 150-156. Mr. Gough properly remarks on this proposal, that it was a plain confession, that the tender of the oath was a mere pretext to be vexatious to the subject, an arbitrary measure assumed for the mere purpose of persecution.

Gough, vol. 2. p. 29, &c.

|| Ibid. p. 92-96.

him to prison till the next month. At the spring assizes of 1663, the oath was again administered unto him, and on his refusal, an indictment was drawn up against him, which he traversed. bond for his good behaviour till his trial came on being required of him, he suffered himself to be recommitted to prison rather than give it, as he apprehended it would be a tacit acknowledgement of past ill-behaviour, and his attendance at meetings in the mean time, which a sense of duty would not suffer him to neglect, would be interpreted as a breach of engagement*. As he was going to the prison he turned to the people, and uttered this devout wish, "The fear of God be among you all." And the people generally appeared very affectionate to him, and pitied his hard circumstancest: while the justices of Westmoreland endeavoured to prepossess the judge and court against him by invidious reflections on him and the society, and by the weight of their united influence and enmity.

At the summer assizes he was again brought to the bar. Modesty, equanimity, good sense, sober reasoning, and deep impressions of religion, marked his conduct at both assizes, and appear to have softened the sternness of his judges. The sentence, which confiscated his lands to the king during his life, and his goods and chattels for ever, and consigned him to prison for the rest of his days, was however passed upon him; the judge, it was observed, pronounced it with a faint and low voice, as if he was sensible that this man was greatly wronged, and that himself did not entirely approve of the sentence he was passing ‡. mistaken zeal for religion (our historian remarks), the plainest rules of morality are violated, and in forcing uniformity in unessential points, the substantial parts, mercy, justice, and truth, are obliterated."

"In

The case of Hannah Trigg, on account of the singular severity of it, deserves particular mention. She was one of twelve Quakers who received sentence of transportation, being tried and convicted

a bill of indictment preferred against them for the third offence. The circumstance which particularly marked the tyranny and illegality of the treatment of this young woman was, that she was not sixteen years of age, and the certificate of her birth was arbitrarily rejected by the justices. After sentence she sickened in Newgate, and died there. The unfeeling inhumanity, which was insatiate with her life, was extended to her corpse. Her relations were deprived of the consolation of interring her as they desired, but she was carried to the burying-place of the felons; and when the bearers came to the ground, finding no grave made, they left the corpse unburied, saying they would make a grave next morning. The girl's mother attending the funeral, had the grief and anguish to behold this treatment of

*Gough, vol. 2. p. 31, 32.

+ Ibid. p. 100.

Ibid. p. 108.

her daughter's remains in silent sorrow, without the power of remedy *.

The sufferings also of Joseph Fuce, a man of patient and meek spirit, and very laborious as a preacher, who died in the WhiteLion prison in Southwark in 1665, should not pass unnoticed. In 1660, being at a meeting at Deal, he, with twenty-three others, was seized by several armed men, and being committed to Sandown-castle, they were kept there several nights and days, their friends not being allowed to bring them either food to eat or straw to lie on. He and another were afterward removed to Dover-castle, and with five other of their friends were locked up in one room, from which they were permitted no egress, not even for the necessities of nature, nor were their friends allowed any access to them; and the servant of the marshal, for shewing them some little favour, was dismissed from his place. Joseph Fuce remonstrating, when an opportunity offered, on the cruel usage they received, was answered with a volley of oaths and execrations. His pious ears being wounded with this profaneness, he bore his testimony against it by a serious reproof. The marshal at this, exasperated to rage, caused him to be dragged headlong down several stone steps into a dungeon, overrun with filth and with vermin, into which no light or air could enter, but by some holes cut in the door. He was kept there two days and two nights, without fire, candle, straw, or any thing to lie on but an old blanket. When he had obtained some straw, for want of air, through the damp and stench of his dismal lodging, he fell sick and after nine days' confinement, as he seemed at the point of death, the fear of being questioned for murdering him moved the marshal to remove him, and to permit him to return to his fellow-prisoners, with whom he continued several months till released by the king's proclamation+.

:

-Neither the calamities to which the society of Quakers were exposed, nor the sufferings which with peculiar severity were felt by some of its most eminent and worthy members, could damp the ardour of their zeal in defending their cause and disseminating their principles, but served to call forth their vigorous exertions. Margaret Fell, on the apprehension of George Fox, published a brief narrative of that violent proceeding, and took a journey to London to lay the case before the king, requesting his favourable interposition, "to cause him to be removed to London, and hear his cause himself:" in which suit she was heard ‡. When, in consequence of the insurrection of the fifth monarchy men, many of the Quakers, without crimination, without conviction, were violently haled to prison, in addition to the endeavours used for their relief, by publishing and presenting to the king a declaration from that people, against all sedition, plotters, fighters, &c. the same lady several times waited personGough, vol. 2. p. 127. + Ibid. vol. 2. p. 143–145. Ibid. vol. 1. p. 435-437.