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ART. I.-A Chronological Summary of events and circumstances connected with the origin and progress of the doctrines and practices of the Quakers.

A. D.

(Continued from p. 169.)

The Fire of London. George Fox discharged from a three 1666. years' imprisonment.

During this confinement, he had been kept so close a prisoner, that to his friends he was as a man buried alive. (a) On some unjust surmise or allegation of a political nature, he had been removed about a year before from Lancaster to Scarboro' Castle. Here he was kept under guard, and in circumstances of great hardship: and, while debarred the company of his friends, was freely exposed to the intrusions of many of different denominations who came to dispute with him. His account of his release shall be given in his own words. (b)

"After I had lain prisoner above a year in Scarborough Castle, I sent a letter to the king, in which I gave him an account of my imprisonment, and the bad usage I had received in prison: and also that I was informed that no man could deliver me but he.-After this, John Whitehead being in London and having acquaintance also with Esq. Marsh, he went to visit him, and spoke to him about me; and he undertook, if John Whitehead would get the state of my case drawn up, to deliver it to the Master of requests, Sir John Birkenhead,

(a) Gough, ii, 150—155.

(b) Journal, 385.

VOL. II.

2 c

who would endeavour to get a release for me.-So John Whitehead and Ellis Hookes drew up a relation of my imprisonment and sufferings, and carried it to Marsh; and he went with it to the Master of requests, who procured an order from the king for my release.-The substance of the order was, That the king being certainly informed that I was a man principled against plotting and fighting, and had been ready at all times to discover plots, rather than to make anytherefore his royal pleasure was, that I should be discharged from my imprisonment. As soon as this order was obtained John Whitehead came to Scarborough with it, and delivered it to the Governor; who upon receipt of it gathered the officers together, and without requiring bonds or sureties for my peaceable living, being satisfied that I was a man of a peaceable life, he discharged me freely, and gave me the following passport:

Permit the bearer hereof, George Fox, late a prisoner here and now discharged by his Majesty's order, quietly to pass about his lawful occasions, without molestation. Given under my hand at Scarborough Castle, this first day of September, 1666. Jordan Crosslands, Governor of Scarborough Castle.""

It appears that bis conduct in this fortress had gained the esteem and confidence of the garrison: so that the officers were accustomed to say of him,' He is as stiff as a tree, and as pure as a bell;' and the Governor was kind to Friends to his dying-day.'

The House at the Bull and Mouth being destroyed by the Fire, the principal Meeting-place of the Society is transferred to a New House erected in this year in Gracechurch Street. This house continued for about a century and a half to be the place of the Yearly Meeting, and of the Society's records. Having been of later time also burnt down, it has been rebuilt in a substantial and convenient manner, but the Records and the place of the Yearly Meeting have been for many years at the New Meeting houses in Bishopsgate Street.

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Persecution (chiefly for meeting together) continues heavy upon Friends: especially in the counties of Berks and Northampton. In the former county, a man was particularly active in it whom it may be right here to chronicle for infamy, along with Sir Richard Brown of London and Sir John Helliar of Bristol. Sir William Armorer [miscalled] a Justice of the peace' of this county, did not think it beneath his office, or unbecoming his character as a man, to lay violent hands on tender females, whom he found at Meetings quietly worshipping God in silence; nor to utter on occasion the most profane and disgusting language against them. His conduct to the men exhibited for years together, and on all occasions, every kind of cruelty not without suspicion of coveting their estates; especially that of Thomas Curtis of Reading, whose whole family he had got at one time into prison: so that the coverture of the wife (as she justly observed in Court) was on this occasion no protection. For his manner of doing justice' let the following instances suffice.

"On the same day [the 16th January, 1666, at the Sessions in Reading] was a trial of Joseph Phipps for the third offence, on the act of banishment: a quaker who had just before been tried, was acquitted. Whereupon the Court discharged that Jury and empannelled another; Armorer saying to the bailiffs, 'Go out and pick a jury, you know there are honest men enough in the town.' One of the bailiffs answered, Yes, Sir William, I'll fit you.' Another jury being sworn, Phipps was set to the bar, and his indictment read, to which he had before pleaded Not guilty. The prisoner insisted that there were not five persons of sixteen years of age at the Meeting. Edward Dolby answered [on the bench] If there were but one of that age, yet if there were five present, he would send that one to prison as a breaker of the law: for though the rest were not punishable by that Act, yet they would serve to make up the number.

This unequal construction of the law was pressed upon the jury; as was also the confession of one of the prisoners, that they were met 'to seek the Lord.' And when one of them asked whether to seek the Lord were a crime worthy of banishment, the Judge answered 'Yes.' The jury went out, and tarrying long the Court sent for them, and threatened such as favoured the prisoners' cause-but they could not agree. So they were ordered to be kept all night without fire or candle, &c. and that no person should come at them till they were agreed.

Next morning the Court sat again, and sent to know whether the jury were yet agreed. They answered, No. Yet after some time two of the dissatisfied began to comply; and some crying, A verdict, a verdict! they came into Court. The Court asking if they were agreed, one of the jury answered I am not satisfied-Armorer replied You shall be satisfied. So the foreman said, Guilty! though four of the jury had not agreed to the verdict. However, the Judge passed sentence on Phipps, That he should be transported to some of his majesty's plantations, there to remain seven years. Under which sentence he was returned to prison, and lay there till discharged by the King's letters patent, about six years after.

At the Sessions at Abingdon, 1667, Henry Adams, indicted under the Act for banishment, was tried as for the third offence; 'but no record of his first or second offence could be produced, nor did any witness appear to prove a third; so that the Jury brought him in 'Not guilty. This verdict being displeasing to the Court, the Jury were sent back, and by Armorer's influence and menaces, (who swore that the Records, though lost were true) some of the Jury brought in a contrary verdict; which the rest, through fear, did not oppose. Upon which the prisoner was remanded to jail; but no sentence pronounced against him in Court. When he afterwards asked the jailer, what order he had concerning him, his answer was, 'Harry, thee art for transportation: they have done it since among themselves. He continued in prison five years, till released with others, in 1672.' (c) (c) Besse, i, 26, 27: Berkshire. Gough, ii, 224. Yorkshireman, No. 2, Art. iii.

It is but just to add that a Jury in the same court, the latter end of 1664, had acquitted about fifty quakers, though sworn against by Armorer and the Clerk of the Peace, on the ground of an informality in the tender of the oath of allegiance to them.

In Northamptonshire, the number of persons of this persuasion at one time under close imprisonment in the County gaol was more than fourscore of whom many were farmers and husbandmen, lockt up from their business both in Hay-time and Harvest to their very great loss and damage. (d) Fifteen Friends were, in this county, in two years' time, sentenced to banishment: one was released by death in the prison and in 1667 we have an account of enormous and illegal distraints on their crops, at the suit of one Whitfield, priest of Bugbrook; who had the persons of the owners already in prison, and when asked by the gaoler, whether he might not let them go out sometimes, to fetch in their provisions and necessaries, replied "No! keep them in and pine them.'

Isaac Penington, about three weeks after his release from his last imprisonment (e) was again apprehended by soldiers sent from Sir Philip Palmer, by order, as was said, of the Earl of Bridgewater, who took him [a gentleman of good estate] out of his bed, and conveyed him directly to Aylesbury gaol; where without any legal cause he was kept a year and a half, in rooms so cold, damp and unhealthy, that he contracted a sickness of several months' continuance. During this long confinement he was never called for, either at sessions or assize, but by some illegal means returned on the Calendar to remain in prison. At length, being removed by Habeas Corpus to the King's bench bar, the Court, surprised to find a man kept so long in prison for nothing, set him at liberty. (ƒ)

A. D. George Fox travels through the counties, to establish Meet1666. ings for discipline among Friends. (g)

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He says himself of this engagement, Then I was moved of the Lord to recommend the setting up of five Monthly Meetings of men and women in the city of London, besides the Women's meeting (h) and the Quarterly meetings; to take care of God's glory, and to admonish and exhort such as walked disorderly or carelessly, and not according to truth. For whereas Friends had only Quarterly Meetings, now Truth was spread and Friends grown more numerous, I was moved to recommend the setting up of Monthly Meetings, throughout the nation. (i) An account of his proceeding through many counties follows in the Journal, with an adventure by the way:

"We went into Radnorshire, where we had many precious meetings and the monthly meetings were settled in the Lord's power.As we came out of that county, staying a little at a market town, a justice's clerk and other rude fellows combined together to do us a

(d) Besse, i, 535. (e) See p. 166 in No. 35. (f) Besse, i, 78. (g) Gough, ii, 158--199. (h) See No. 34, Art. ii, p. 139 of vol. ii. (i) Journal, 390: Ellwood's Life, under date 1667.