tender nature of that very good man, not only to put him in hopes of mercy, but to be his advocate by letter to me, to mitigate, at least, if not wholly to remit the prosecution. To which I so far only consented, as to let him know, I would suspend the execution of the warrant upon him, according as he behaved himself, or until he gave fresh provocation. At which message the fellow was so overjoyed, that relying with confidence thereon, he returned openly to his family and labour, and applied himself to business (as his neighbours observed and reported) with greater diligence and industry, than he had ever done before.

Thus began, and thus ended, the informingtrade, in these parts of the county of Bucks; the ill success that these first informers found, discouraging all others, how vile soever, from attempting the like enterprise there ever after. And though it cost some money to carry on the prosecution, and some pains too, yet, for every shilling so spent, a pound probably might be saved, of what in all likelihood would have been lost, by the spoil and havock that might have been made, by distresses taken on their informations.

But so angry was the convicting justice, whatever others of the same rank were, at this prosecution, and the loss thereby of the service of those honest men, the perjured informers. For as I heard an attorney, one Hitchcock of Alesbury, who was their advocate in court, say, A great lord, a peer of the realm, called them

so, in a letter directed to him; whereby he recommended to him the care and defence of them and their cause; that he prevailed to have the oath of allegiance tendered in court to Thomas Zachary; which he knew he would not take, because he could not take any oath at all; by which snare he was kept in prison a long time after, and so far as I remember, until a general pardon released him.

But though it pleased the Divine Providence which sometimes vouchsafeth to bring good out of evil, to put a stop, in a great measure at least, to the prosecution here begun; yet in other parts, both of the city and country, it was carried on with very great severity and ri gour; the worst of men, for the most part, being set up for informers; the worst of magistrates encouraging and abetting them; and the worst of the priests, who first began to blow the fire, now seeing how it took, spread and blazed, clapping their hands and hallooing them on to this evil work.

The sense whereof, as it deeply affected my heart with a sympathizing pity for the oppres sed sufferers, so it raised in my spirit an holy disdain, and contempt of that spirit and its agent, by which this ungodly work was stirred up and carried on. Which at length brake forth in an expostulatory poem, under the title of Gigantomachia, (the wars of the giants against heaven.) Not without some allusion to the second psalm. *

See No. 11 of the Appendix.

1671. As the unreasonable rage and furious violence of the persecutors had drawn the former expostulation from me, so, in awhile after, my heart being deeply affected with a sense of the great loving-kindness, and tender goodness of the Lord to his people, in bearing up their spirits in their greatest exercises, and preserving them through the sharpest trials, in a faithful testimony to his blessed truth, and opening in due time a door of deliverance to them, I could not forbear to celebrate his praises in some lines.*

1672. Scarce was the before-mentioned storm of outward persecution from the govern. ment blown over, when Satan raised another storm of another kind against us, on this occasion. The foregoing storm of persecution, as it lasted long, so in many parts of the nation, and particularly at London, it fell very sharp and violent, especially on the Quakers. For they having no refuge but God alone to fly unto, could not dodge and shift to avoid the suffering, as others of other denominations could, and in their worldly wisdom and policy did; altering their meetings, with respect both to place and time, and forbearing to meet when forbidden, or kept out of their meeting-houses. So that of the several sorts of dissenters, the Quakers only held up a public testimony, as a standard or ensign of religion, by keeping their meeting duly and fully, at the accustomed times and places, so long as they were suffered to

* See No. 12 of the Appendix.

1

enjoy the use of their meeting-houses; and when they were shut up, and Friends kept out of them by force, they assembled in the streets, as near to their meeting-houses as they could.

This bold and truly christian behaviour in the Quakers, disturbed and not a little displeased the persecutors; who fretting, complained that the stubborn Quakers brake their strength, and bore off the blow from those other dissenters, whom as they most feared, so they principally aimed at. For indeed, the Quakers they rather despised than feared; as being a people, from whose peaceable principles and practices, they held themselves secure from danger; whereas, having suffered severely, and that lately too, by and under the other dissenters, they thought they had just cause to be apprehensive of danger from them, and good reason to suppress them.

On the other hand, the more ingenuous amongst other dissenters, of each denomina tion, sensible of the ease they enjoyed by our bold and steady suffering, which abated the heat of the persecutors, and blunted the edge of the sword before it came to them, frankly acknowledged the benefit received; calling us the bulwark that kept off the force of the stroke from them, and praying that we might be preserved, and enabled to break the strength of the enemy. Nor could some of them for bear, those especially who were called Baptists, to express their kind and favourable

opinion of us, and of the principles we professed; which emboldened us to go through that, which but to hear of was a terror to them.

This their good will, raised ill will in some of their teachers against us; who, though willing to reap the advantage of a shelter, by a retreat behind us, during the time that the storm lasted, yet partly through an evil emulation, and partly through fear lest they should lose some of those members of their society, who had discovered such favourable thoughts of our principles and us, they set themselves, as soon as the storm was over, to represent us in as ugly a dress, and in as frightful a figure to the world, as they could invent and put upon

us.

1673. In order whereunto, one Thomas Hicks, a preacher among the Baptists at London, took upon him to write several pamphlets successively, under the title of a Dialogue between a Christian and a Quaker; which were so craftily contrived, that the unwary reader might conclude them to be, not merely fictions, but real discourses, actually held between one of the people called Quakers, and some other person. In these feigned dialogues, Hicks, having no regard to justice or common honesty, had made his counterfeit Quaker say whatsoever he thought would render him one while sufficiently erroneous, another while ridiculous enough; forging in the Quaker's name, some things so abominably false, other