CHAPTER 1 (12)

There were great imprisonments in this, and the former year, while I was prisoner at Lancaster and Scarbro’. At London many Friends were crowded into Newgate, and other prisons, where the sickness was; and many died in prison.[10] Many also were banished, and several sent on shipboard by the king’s order. Some masters of ships would not carry them, but set them on shore again; yet some were sent to Barbadoes, to Jamaica, and to Nevis, and the Lord blessed them there. One master of a ship was very wicked and cruel to Friends that were put on board his vessel; for he kept them down under decks, though the sickness was amongst them; so that many died of it. But the Lord visited him for his wickedness; for he lost most of his seamen by the plague, and lay several months crossed with contrary winds, though other ships went out and made their voyages. At last he came before Plymouth, and there the governor and magistrates would not suffer him, or any of his men, to land, though he wanted many necessaries for his voyage; but Thomas Lower, Arthur Cotton, John Light, and other Friends, went to the ship’s side and carried necessaries for the Friends that were prisoners on board. The master being thus crossed and vexed, cursed them that put upon him this freight, and said, “he hoped he should not go far before he was taken.” And the vessel was but just out of sight of Plymouth before she was taken by a Dutch man-of-war, and carried into Holland. When they came there, the States sent the banished Friends back to England, with a passport, and a certificate, “that they had not made an escape, but were sent back by them.” In time the Lord’s power wrought over this storm, and many of our persecutors were confounded and put to shame.[11]

After I had lain prisoner above a year in Scarbro’ 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, no man could deliver me but he.” After this, John Whitehead being at London, and being acquainted with Esquire Marsh, 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, and endeavour to get a release for me. So John Whitehead and Ellis Hookes[12] drew up an account 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 any, &c., therefore his royal pleasure was, that I should be discharged from my imprisonment,” &c. As soon as this order was obtained, John Whitehead came to Scarbro’ with it, and delivered it to the governor; who, upon receipt thereof, 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 any molestation. Given under my hand at Scarbro’ Castle, this first day of September, 1666.”

After I was released, I would have made the governor a present for the civility and kindness he had of late showed me; but he would not receive anything; saying, “whatever good he could do for me and my friends he would do it, and never do them any hurt.” And afterwards, if at any time the mayor of the town sent to him for soldiers to break up Friends’ meetings, if he sent any down he would privately give them a charge “not to meddle.” He continued loving to his dying day. The officers also and the soldiers were mightily changed, and became very respectful to me, and when they had occasion to speak of me, they would say, “he is as stiff as a tree, and as pure as a bell; for we could never bow him.”

The very next day after my release, the fire broke out in London, and the report of it came quickly down into the country.[13] Then I saw the Lord God was true and just in his word, which he had showed me before in Lancaster jail, when I saw the angel of the Lord with a glittering sword drawn southward, as before expressed. The people of London were forewarned of this fire; yet few laid it to heart, or believed it; but rather grew more wicked, and higher in pride. For a Friend was moved to come out of Huntingdonshire a little before the fire, to scatter his money, and turn his horse loose on the streets, to untie the knees of his breeches, let his stockings fall down, and to unbutton his doublet, and tell the people, “so should they run up and down, scattering their money and their goods, half undressed, like mad people, as he was a sign to them;” and so they did, when the city was burning.

Thus hath the Lord exercised his prophets and servants by his power, showed them signs of his judgments, and sent them to forewarn the people; but, instead of repenting, they have beaten and cruelly entreated some, and some they have imprisoned, both in the former power’s days and since. But the Lord is just, and happy are they that obey his word. Some have been moved to go naked in their streets, in the other power’s days, and since, as signs of their nakedness; and have declared amongst them “that God would strip them of their hypocritical professions, and make them as bare and naked as they were.” But instead of considering it, they have many times whipped, or otherwise abused them, and sometimes imprisoned them. Others have been moved to go in sackcloth, and to denounce the woes and vengeance of God against the pride and haughtiness of the people; but few regarded it. And in the other power’s days, the wicked, envious, and professing priests, put up several petitions both to Oliver and Richard, called protectors, and to the parliaments, judges, and justices, against us, full of lies, vilifying words and slanders; but we got copies of them, and, through the Lord’s assistance, answered them all, and cleared the Lord’s truth and ourselves of them. But O! the body of darkness that rose against the truth in them that made lies their refuge. But the Lord swept them away; and in and with his power, truth, light, and life, hedged his lambs about, and preserved them as on eagles’ wings. Therefore we all had, and have great encouragement to trust the Lord, who, we saw by his power and Spirit, overturned and brought to naught all the confederacies and counsels that were hatched in darkness against his truth and people; and by the same truth gave his people dominion, that therein they might serve him.

Indeed I could not but take notice, how the hand of the Lord turned against those persecutors, who had been the cause of my imprisonment, or had been abusive or cruel to me in it. The officer that fetched me to Holker-Hall wasted his estate, and soon after fled into Ireland. And most of the justices that were upon the bench at the sessions when I was sent to prison, died in a while after; as old Thomas Preston, Rawlinson, Porter, and Matthew West, of Borwick. And Justice Fleming’s wife died, and left him thirteen or fourteen motherless children, who had imprisoned two Friends to death, and thereby made several children fatherless. Colonel Kirby never prospered after. The chief constable, Richard Dodgson, died soon after, and Mount, the petty constable, and the wife of the other petty constable John Ashburnham, who railed at me in her house, died soon after. William Knipe, the witness they brought against me, died soon after also. Hunter, the jailer of Lancaster, who was very wicked to me while I was his prisoner, was cut off in his young days: and the under-sheriff that carried me from Lancaster prison towards Scarbro’, lived not long after. And Joblin, the jailer of Durham, who was prisoner with me in Scarbro’ castle, and had often incensed the governor and soldiers against me, though he got out of prison, yet the Lord cut him off in his wickedness soon after. When I came into that country again, most of those that dwelt in Lancashire were dead, and others ruined in their estates; so that, though I did not seek revenge upon them, for their actings against me contrary to the law, yet the Lord had executed his judgments upon many of them.