more, and three women, of which the woman of the house was one, although her husband then was, and for divers years before had been, a prisoner in the Fleet for tithes, and had nobody to take care of his family and business but her his wife.

We six he committed to Alesbury gaol. Which when the doctor's wife heard him read to the constable, she attacked him again; and having put him in mind that it was a sickly time, and that the pestilence was reported to be in that place, she in handsome terms desired him to consider in time, how he would answer the cry of our blood, if by his sending us to be shut up in an infected place, we should lose our lives there. This made him alter his purpose, and by a new mittimus sent us to the house of correction at Wiccomb. And al.

though he committed us upon the act for banishment, which limited a certain time for imprisonment, yet he in his mittimus limited no time, but ordered us to be kept till we should be delivered by due course of law; so little regardful was he, though a lawyer, of keeping to the letter of the law.

We were committed on the thirteenth day of the month called March, 1665, and were kept close prisoners there till the seventh day of the month called June, 1666; which was some days above twelve weeks, and much above what the act required.

1666. Then were we sent for to the justice's house, and the rest being released, Morgan Watkins and I were required to find sureties

for our appearance at the next assize; which we refusing to do, were committed anew to our old prison, the house of correction at Wiccomb, there to lie until the next assizes: Morgan being, in this second mittimus, represented as a notorious offender in preaching; and I, as being upon the second conviction, in order to banishment. There we lay till the twenty-fifth of the same month; and then, by the favour of the earl of Ancram, being brought before him at his house, we were discharged from the prison, upon our promise to appear, if at liberty and in health, at the assizes. Which we did, and were there discharged by proclamation.

During my imprisonment in this prison, I betook myself for an employment, to making of nets for kitchen service, to boil herbs, &c. in; which trade I learned of Morgan Watkins, and selling some, and giving others, I pretty well stocked the Friends of that country with them.

Though in that confinement I was not very well suited with company for conversation; Morgan's natural temper not being very agree. able to mine, yet we kept a fair and brotherly correspondence, as became Friends, prison. fellows and bed-fellows; which we were. And indeed it was a good time I think to us all, for I found it so to me; the Lord being graciously pleased to visit my soul with the refreshing dews of his divine life, whereby my spirit was more and more quickened to him, and truth gained ground in me over the temp

tations and snares of the enemy. Which frequently raised in my heart thanksgivings and praises unto the Lord. And at one time more especially, the sense I had of the prosperity of truth, and the spreading thereof, filling my heart with abundant joy, made my cup overflow, and the following lines dropped out.

For truth I suffer bonds, in truth I live,
And unto truth this testimony give;
That truth shall over all exalted be,
And in dominion reign for evermore:

The child's already born, that this may see;
Honour, praise, glory be to God therefore.

And underneath thus,

Tho' death and hell should against truth combine,
Its glory shall through all their darkness shine.

This I saw with an eye of faith, beyond the reach of human sense.

For,

As strong desire

Draws objects nigher

In apprehension, than indeed they are;

I, with an eye

That pierced high,

Did thus of truth's prosperity declare.

After we had been discharged at the assizes, I returned to Isaac Penington's family at Bottrel's in Chalfont; and, as I remember, Morgan Watkins with me; leaving Isaac Penington a prisoner in Alesbury gaol.

The lodgings we had in this farm-house (Bottrel's) proving too strait and inconvenient

for the family, I took larger and better lodg ings for them in Berrie-house, at Amersham; whither we went at the time called Michaelmas, having spent the summer at the other place.

1667. Some time after, was that memorable meeting, appointed to be holden at London, through a divine opening in the motion of life, in that eminent servant and prophet of God, George Fox; for the restoring and bringing in again those who had gone out from truth, and the holy unity of Friends therein, by the means and ministry of John Perrot.

This man came pretty early among Friends, and too early took upon him the ministerial office; and being, though little in person, yet great in opinion of himself, nothing less would serve him than to go and convert the Pope": in order whereunto, he (having a better man than himself, John Luff, to accompany him) travelled to Rome, where they had not been long, ere they were taken up and clapped into prison; Luff, as I remember, was put in the Inquisition, and Perrot in their Bedlam, or hospital for madmen.

Luff died in prison, not without well-grounded suspicion of being murdered there; but Perrot lay there some time, and now and then sent over an epistle to be printed here, written in such an affected and phantastic style, as might have induced an indifferent reader to believe, they had suited the place of his confinement to his condition.

After some time, through the mediation of Friends, (who hoped better of him than he

proved) with some person of note and interest there, he was released, and came back for England. And the report of his great sufferings there, (far greater in report than in reality) joined with a singular shew of sanctity, so far opened the hearts of many tender and compassionate Friends towards him, that it gave him the advantage of insinuating himself into their affections and esteem, and made way for the more ready propagation of that peculiar error of his, of keeping on the hat in time of prayer, as well public as private, unless they had an immediate motion at that time to put it off.

Now although I had not the least acquaintance with this man, not having ever exchanged a word with him, though I knew him by sight; nor had I any esteem of him, for (either his natural parts or ministerial gift, but rather a dislike of his aspect, preaching and way of writing; yet this error of his being broached in the time of my infancy, and weakness of judgment as to truth, (while I lived privately in London, and had little converse with Friends) I, amongst the many who were catched in that snare, was taken with the notion, as what then seemed to my weak understanding, suitable to the doctrine of a spiritual dispensation. And the matter coming to warm debates, both in words and writing, I, in a misguided zeal, was ready to have entered the lists of contention about it; not then seeing what spirit it proceeded from, and was managed by; nor foreseeing the dis.

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