own accusation. From this curious arrest he was, by Charles's order, set free. A momentary pause in the persecution led to the release of the Quakers; but they were again, upon a mad plot of the Fifth Monarchy men, involved in suspicion, and the persecution was renewed. Fox, however, had influence enough next year to procure from the king a royal letter, directing the New England authorities to desist from their persecution of the Quakers: and this he followed up by petitions and protests against the injustice with which they were treated at home. We find him, next, interrupted at his meeting in Pall Mall, but changing disorderly officers into quiet hearers. Then he was arrested by the magistrates in Leicestershire; sent up to Leicester gaol; halting at various places to preach; preaching in the prison-yard; arrested in Kent; appearing again in 1663 in Westmoreland, from whence he was again lodged in Lancaster gaol, which he found crowded with labouring men, whose only offence was that they were Quakers. In that gaol he lay for two months, till the assizes; and from that time till the summer assizes, four months afterwards, he was detained in a room open to the weather, so much out of repair as to be dangerous. When placed in court, he met with calmness the indignities which were heaped upon him, exposed the errors of the indictment, and compelled the judge to acknowledge them. But, instead of being set free, he was remanded to prison, where he remained

with every possible hardship, in a wretched cell, during the whole of an inclement winter, till the next spring assizes. He then appeared in court, emaciated and enfeebled by illness; and from thence, broken in health but undaunted in spirit, he was dragged on horseback to Scarborough Castle. In that place he was treated with the same inhumanity; placed in a room out of repair, and open to the weather; debarred from his friends, though all, who wished to dispute with him or to deride him, were admitted. Bread and water were his only fare. Still the firm spirit was found as calm and keen as ever; those, who came to him to controvert, were generally worsted; and the Governor of the Castle, who at first regarded him with dislike, became his friend. From this imprisonment, which had lasted for two years and three months, he was released by royal order in the autumn of 1666. He was set free just after the plague of London, when the great fire broke out. But no sooner was Fox set free than he appears, though hardly able to ride, and his stomach refusing food, travelling through Yorkshire, repairing to London, and instituting, for the government of his increasing sect, the Monthly Meetings. In the following year, a proclamation under the Conventicle Act forbade all religious meetings. The Quakers, who never discontinued theirs, suffered severely. In 1669 we find Fox in Ireland, and travelling through many parts of England, where his poor Quakers needed comfort; for

the Act, limiting meetings to five in number, involved them in the severest penalties. Seeking always the post of danger, Fox repaired, in the year 1670, to London, and attended the principal meeting in Gracechurch Street. There the soldiers and constables arrested him, and brought him before the Lord Mayor, who treated him however, with the respect due to a reputation now established,* and dismissed him without injury.

* In 1662, Fox was taken before Lord Beaumont, who, asking his name, he replied, "My name is George Fox, and I am well known by that name. Ay," said Lord Beaumont, "You are known all the world over."

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One of the Magistrates for Middlesex, Justice Marsh, said to a Roman Catholic with whom Fox was arguing, and worsting him-" Oh! you do not know this man. If he would but come to Church now and then, he would be a brave man."

In 1673, when Fox was tried before the King's Bench, lawyers of note undertook his defence, and the Chief Justice and other Judges treated him with great respect.

Sir Matthew Hale said he had heard many good reports of Fox-and with the rest of the judges ordered him to be set free.

In 1673, the Chairman of the Quarter Sessions on trying Fox, said, "Mr. Fox, you are a famous man," &c. The other magistrates took a warm interest in Fox's favor.

Justice Marsh informed the King, " that he had sent some of the Quakers to prison contrary to his conscience, but he could not do so any more."

CHAPTER IV.

THE CLOSE OF THE MISSION.

MEANWHILE the sect, the seed of which Fox had sown only twenty-three years before, had now, watered by persecution, sprung up and spread over the Continent, was numerous in the West Indies, and was one of the leading religious bodies in America; and the obscure disciples, whom in his youth Fox had begun to collect, were now, that he had reached the age of four-andforty, a great host.

In 1671 Fox visited Jamaica and Barbadoes, and early in the next year landed at Maryland; from whence he travelled through New England, and other parts of the States, for fifteen months, making his way through countries now easily traversed, but then with great hardship, and only on horseback; exposed to the severity of the winter, often bivouacking in the snow, with no other shelter than a tree; but preaching everywhere, extending his interest to the Indians, visiting their settlements, and speaking to them through an interpreter.

Here, the rude Quaker found that over this new world his reputation had preceded him. Governors, magistrates, and military men received him everywhere with respect; and, when he sailed from Maryland for Bristol, on his return, he left behind him, instead of a feeble sect, a powerful and growing party. He came back, however, from reputation and respect in the New World, to his old sufferings; and resuming his activity, he was again, in 1673, lodged in Worcester gaol. There, unjustly detained by the magistrates, he was removed to the Court of King's Bench in London; and as he refused to give bail, he was, by the anomalous practice of the times, suffered to go at large, on condition that he went back to the Worcester gaol. In Worcester his reappearance in court gave signs of the triumph of his influence, and the efficacy of his long conflict with intolerance. For it was no longer amongst a hooting mob, and before a taunting Bench, that the simple Quaker appeared. The chairman indeed, a bitter enemy, treated him with harshness; tendered him the oaths of supremacy and allegiance; and, upon his refusing to take them, committed him to gaol. But many of the magistrates were in his favour; men of rank, like the Earl of Salisbury's son, interested themselves in his behalf; the judges, who condemned him, admitted that he was a man of repute, and " peaceful; " and the crowd, who thronged the court, listened to the proceedings with a kindly interest. But though