Part 13

We told him we did intend, if he did not otherwise dispose of us, to spend that night with our friend Isaac Penington, and would, if the Lord gave us leave, be there in the morning, ready to answer his requirings. Whereupon he dismissed us all, willing, as we thought, to be rid of us; for he seemed not to be of an ill temper, nor desirous to put us to trouble, if he could help it.

Back then we went to Isaac Penington’s. But when we were come thither, oh the work we had with poor John Ovy! He was so dejected in mind, so covered with shame and confusion of face for his cowardliness, that we had enough to do to pacify him towards himself.

The place he had found out to shelter himself in was so commodiously contrived, that undiscovered he could discern when the soldiers went off with us, and understand when the bustle was over and the coast clear. Whereupon he adventured to peep out of his hole, and in a while drew near by degrees to the house again; and finding all things quiet and still, he adventured to step within the doors, and found the Friends who were left behind peaceably settled in the meeting again.

The sight of this smote him, and made him sit down among them. And after the meeting was ended, and the Friends departed to their several homes, addressing himself to Mary Penington, as the mistress of the house, he could not enough magnify the bravery and courage of the Friends, nor sufficiently debase himself. He told her how long he had been a professor, what pains he had taken, what hazards he had run, in his youthful days, to get to meetings; how, when the ways were forelaid and passages stopped, he swam through rivers to reach a meeting; and now, said he, that I am grown old in the profession of religion, and have long been an instructor and encourager of others, that I should thus shamefully fall short myself, is matter of shame and sorrow to me.

Thus he bewailed himself to her. And when we came back he renewed his complaints of himself to us, with high aggravations of his own cowardice; which gave occasion to some of the Friends tenderly to represent to him the difference between profession and possession, form and power.

He was glad, he said, on our behalfs, that we came off so well, and escaped imprisonment.

But when he understood that George Whitehead and I were liable to an after-reckoning next morning, he was troubled, and wished the morning was come and gone, that we might be gone with it.

We spent the evening in grave conversation and in religious discourses, attributing the deliverance we hitherto had to the Lord. And the next morning, when we were up and had eaten, we tarried some time to see what the Justice would do further with us, and to discharge our engagement to him; the rest of the Friends, who were before fully discharged, tarrying also with us to see the event.

And when we had stayed so long that on all hands it was concluded we might safely go, George Whitehead and I left a few words in writing to be sent to the Justice if he sent after us, importing that we had tarried till such an hour, and not hearing from him, did now hold ourselves free to depart, yet so as that if he should have occasion to send for us again, upon notice thereof we would return.

This done, we took our leave of the family and one of another; they who were for London taking horse, and I and my companions, setting forth on foot for Oxfordshire, went to Wycombe, where we made a short stay to rest and refresh ourselves, and from thence reached our respective homes that night.

After I had spent some time at home, where, as I had no restraint, so (my sisters being gone) I had now no society, I walked up to Chalfont again, and spent a few days with my friends there.

As soon as I came in I was told that my father had been there that day to see Isaac Penington and his wife, but they being abroad at a meeting, he returned to his inn in the town, where he intended to lodge that night. After supper Mary Penington told me she had a mind to go and see him at his inn (the woman of the house being a friend of ours), and I went with her. He seemed somewhat surprised to see me there, because he thought I had been at home at his house; but he took no notice of my hat—at least showed no offence at it, for, as I afterwards understood, he had now an intention to sell his estate, and thought he should need my concurrence therein, which made him now hold it necessary to admit me again into some degree of favour. After we had tarried some little time with him, she rising up to be gone, he waited on her home, and having spent about an hour with us in the family, I waited on him back to his inn. On the way he invited me to come up to London to see my sisters, the younger of whom was then newly married, and directed me where to find them, and also gave me money to defray my charges.

Accordingly I went; yet stayed not long there, but returned to my friend Isaac Penington’s, where I made a little stay, and from thence went back to Crowell.

When I was ready to set forth, my friend Isaac Penington was so kind to send a servant with a brace of geldings to carry me as far as I thought fit to ride, and to bring the horses back. I, intending to go no farther that day than to Wycombe, rode no farther than to Beaconsfield town’s end, having then but five miles to walk. But here a new exercise befell me, the manner of which was thus:

Before I had walked to the middle of the town I was stopped and taken up by the watch. I asked the watchman what authority he had to stop me, travelling peacefully on the highway: he told me he would show me his authority, and in order thereunto, had me into a house hard by, where dwelt a scrivener whose name was Pepys. To him he gave the order which he had received from the constables, which directed him to take up all rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars. I asked him for which of these he stopped me, but he could not answer me.

I thereupon informed him what a rogue in law is, viz., one who for some notorious offence was burnt on the shoulder; and I told them they might search me if they pleased, and see if I was so branded. A vagabond, I told them, was one that had no dwelling-house nor certain place of abode; but I had, and was going to it, and I told them where it was. And for a beggar, I bade them bring any one that could say I had begged or asked relief.

This stopped the fellow’s mouth, yet he would not let me go; but, being both weak-headed and strong-willed, he left me there with the scrivener, and went out to seek the constable, and having found him, brought him thither. He was a young man, by trade a tanner, somewhat better mannered than his wardsman, but not of much better judgment.

He took me with him to his house, and having settled me there, went out to take advice, as I supposed, what to do with me; leaving nobody in the house to guard me but his wife, who had a young child in her arms.

She inquired of me upon what account I was taken up, and seeming to have some pity for me, endeavoured to persuade me not to stay, but to go my way, offering to show me a back way from their house which would bring me into the road again beyond the town, so that none of the town should see me or know what was become of me. But I told her I could not do so.

Then having sat awhile in a muse, she asked me if there was not a place of Scripture which said Peter was at a tanner’s house. I told her there was such a Scripture, and directed her where to find it.

After some time she laid her child to sleep in the cradle, and stepped out on a sudden, but came not in again for a pretty while.

I was uneasy that I was left alone in the house, fearing lest if anything should be missing I might be suspected to have taken it; yet I durst not go out to stand in the street, lest it should be thought I intended to slip away.

But besides that, I soon found work to employ myself in; for the child quickly waking, fell to crying, and I was fain to rock the cradle in my own defence, that I might not be annoyed with a noise, to me not more unpleasant than unusual. At length the woman came in again, and finding me nursing the child, gave me many thanks, and seemed well pleased with my company.

When night came on, the constable himself came in again, and told me some of the chief of the town were met together to consider what was fit to do with me, and that I must go with him to them. I went, and he brought me to a little nasty hut, which they called a town-house (adjoining to their market-house), in which dwelt a poor old woman whom they called Mother Grime, where also the watch used by turns to come in and warm themselves in the night.

When I came in among them they looked, some of them, somewhat sourly on me, and asked me some impertinent questions, to which I gave them suitable answers.

Then they consulted one with another how they should dispose of me that night, till they could have me before some justice of peace to be examined. Some proposed that I should be had to some inn, or other public-house, and a guard set on me there. He that started this was probably an innkeeper, and consulted his own interest. Others objected against this, that it would bring a charge on the town, to avoid which they were for having the watch take charge of me, and keep me walking about the streets with them till morning. Most voices seemed to go this way, till a third wished them to consider whether they could answer the doing of that, and the law would bear them out in it: and this put them to a stand. I heard all their debates, but let them alone, and kept my mind to the Lord.

While they thus bandied the matter to and fro, one of the company asked the rest if any of them knew who this young man was, and whither he was going; whereupon the constable to whom I had given both my name and the name of the town where I dwelt, told them my name was Ellwood, and that I lived at a town called Crowell, in Oxfordshire.

Old Mother Grime, sitting by and hearing this, clapped her hand on her knee, and cried out: “I know Mr. Ellwood of Crowell very well; for when I was a maid I lived with his grandfather there when he was a young man.” And thereupon she gave them such an account of my father as made them look more regardfully on me; and so Mother Grime’s testimony turned the scale, and took me off from walking the rounds with the watch that night.