Part 21

As the consideration of the uncertainty of human life drew the foregoing lines from me, so the sense I had of the folly of mankind, in misspending the little time allowed them in evil ways and vain sports, led me more particularly to trace the several courses wherein the generality of men run unprofitably at best, if not to their hurt and ruin, which I introduced with that axiom of the Preacher (Eccles. i. 2):

ALL IS VANITY.

See here the state of man as in a glass, And how the fashion of this world doth pass.

Some in a tavern spend the longest day, While others hawk and hunt the time away. Here one his mistress courts; another dances; A third incites to lust by wanton glances. This wastes the day in dressing; the other seeks To set fresh colours on her with red cheeks, That, when the sun declines, some dapper spark May take her to Spring Garden or the park. Plays some frequent, and balls; others their prime Consume at dice; some bowl away their time. With cards some wholly captivated are; From tables others scarce an hour can spare. One to soft music mancipates his ear; At shovel-board another spends the year. The Pall Mall this accounts the only sport; That keeps a racket in the tennis-court. Some strain their very eyes and throats with singing, While others strip their hands and backs at ringing. Another sort with greedy eyes are waiting Either at cock-pit or some great bull-baiting. This dotes on running-horses; t’other fool Is never well but in the fencing-school. Wrestling and football, nine-pins, prison-base, Among the rural clowns find each a place. Nay, Joan unwashed will leave her milking-pail To dance at May-pole, or a Whitsun ale. Thus wallow most in sensual delight, As if their day should never have a night, Till Nature’s pale-faced sergeant them surprise, And as the tree then falls, just so it lies. Now look at home, thou who these lines dost read, See which of all these paths thyself dost tread, And ere it be too late that path forsake, Which, followed, will thee miserable make.

After I had thus enumerated some of the many vanities in which the generality of men misspent their time, I sang the following ode in praise of virtue:—

Wealth, beauty, pleasures, honours, all adieu; I value virtue far, far more than you. You’re all but toys For girls and boys To play withal, at best deceitful joys. She lives for ever; ye are transitory, Her honour is unstained; but your glory Is mere deceit— A painted bait, Hung out for such as sit at Folly’s gate. True peace, content, and joy on her attend; You, on the contrary, your forces bend To blear men’s eyes With fopperies, Which fools embrace, but wiser men despise.

About this time my father, resolving to sell his estate, and having reserved for his own use such parts of his household goods as he thought fit, not willing to take upon himself the trouble of selling the rest, gave them unto me; whereupon I went down to Crowell, and having before given notice there and thereabouts that I intended a public sale of them, I sold them, and thereby put some money into my pocket. Yet I sold such things only as I judged useful, leaving the pictures and armour, of which there was some store there, unsold.

Not long after this my father sent for me to come to him at London about some business, which, when I came there, I understood was to join with him in the sale of his estate, which the purchaser required for his own satisfaction and safety, I being then the next heir to it in law. And although I might probably have made some advantageous terms for myself by standing off, yet when I was satisfied by counsel that there was no entail upon it or right of reversion to me, but that he might lawfully dispose of it as he pleased, I readily joined with him in the sale without asking or having the least gratuity or compensation, no, not so much as the fee I had given to counsel to secure me from any danger in doing it.

There having been some time before this a very severe law made against the Quakers by name, and more particularly prohibiting our meetings under the sharpest penalties of five pounds for the first offence so called, ten pounds for the second, and banishment for the third, under pain of felony for escaping or returning without license—which law was looked upon to have been procured by the bishops in order to bring us to a conformity to their way of worship—I wrote a few lines in way of dialogue between a Bishop and a Quaker, which I called

CONFORMITY, PRESSED AND REPRESSED.

B. What! You are one of them that do deny To yield obedience by conformity. Q. Nay: we desire conformable to be. B. But unto what? Q. The Image of the Son. {190} B. What’s that to us! We’ll have conformity Unto our form. Q. Then we shall ne’er have done. For, if your fickle minds should alter, we Should be to seek a new conformity. Thus, who to-day conform to Prelacy, To-morrow may conform to Popery. But take this for an answer, Bishop, we Cannot conform either to them or thee; For while to truth your forms are opposite, Whoe’er conforms thereto doth not aright. B. We’ll make such knaves as you conform, or lie Confined in prisons till ye rot and die. Q. Well, gentle Bishop, I may live to see, For all thy threats, a check to cruelty; But in the meantime, I, for my defence, Betake me to my fortress, Patience.

No sooner was this cruel law made but it was put in execution with great severity; the sense whereof working strongly on my spirit, made me cry earnestly to the Lord that he would arise and set up his righteous judgment in the earth for the deliverance of his people from all their enemies, both inward and outward; and in these terms I uttered it:

Awake, awake, O arm of th’ Lord, awake, Thy sword uptake; Cast what would Thine forgetful of Thee make Into the lake. Awake, I pray, O mighty Jah, awake Make all the world before Thy presence quake, Not only earth, but heaven also shake. Arise, arise, O Jacob’s God, arise, And hear the cries Of ev’ry soul which in distress now lies, And to Thee flies. Arise, I pray, O Israel’s hope, arise; Set free Thy seed, oppressed by enemies. Why should they over it still tyrannize? Make speed, make speed, O Israel’s help, make speed, In time of need; For evil men have wickedly decreed Against Thy seed. Make speed, I pray, O mighty God, make speed; Let all Thy lambs from savage wolves be freed, That fearless on Thy mountain they may feed. Ride on, ride on, Thou Valiant Man of Might, And put to flight Those sons of Belial who do despite To the upright: Ride on, I say, Thou Champion, and smite Thine and Thy people’s enemies, with such might That none may dare ’gainst Thee or Thine to fight.

Although the storm raised by the Act for banishment fell with the greatest weight and force upon some other parts, as at London, Hertford, &c., yet we were not in Buckinghamshire wholly exempted therefrom, for a part of that shower reached us also.

For a Friend of Amersham, whose name was Edward Perot or Parret, departing this life, and notice being given that his body would be buried there on such a day, which was the first day of the fifth month, 1665, the Friends of the adjacent parts of the country resorted pretty generally to the burial, so that there was a fair appearance of Friends and neighbours, the deceased having been well-beloved by both.

After we had spent some time together in the house, Morgan Watkins, who at that time happened to be at Isaac Penington’s, being with us, the body was taken up and borne on Friends’ shoulders along the street in order to be carried to the burying-ground, which was at the town’s end, being part of an orchard belonging to the deceased, which he in his lifetime had appointed for that service.

It so happened that one Ambrose Benett, a barrister at law and a justice of the peace for that county, riding through the town that morning on his way to Aylesbury, was by some ill-disposed person or other informed that there was a Quaker to be buried there that day, and that most of the Quakers in the country were come thither to the burial.

Upon this he set up his horses and stayed, and when we, not knowing anything of his design against us, went innocently forward to perform our Christian duty for the interment of our friend, he rushed out of his inn upon us with the constables and a rabble of rude fellows whom he had gathered together, and having his drawn sword in his hand, struck one of the foremost of the bearers with it, commanding them to set down the coffin. But the Friend who was so stricken, whose name was Thomas Dell, being more concerned for the safety of the dead body than his own, lest it should fall from his shoulder, and any indecency thereupon follow, held the coffin fast; which the Justice observing, and being enraged that his word (how unjust soever) was not forthwith obeyed, set his hand to the coffin, and with a forcible thrust threw it off from the bearers’ shoulders, so that it fell to the ground in the midst of the street, and there we were forced to leave it.

For immediately thereupon, the Justice giving command for the apprehending us, the constables with the rabble fell on us, and drew some and drove others into the inn, giving thereby an opportunity to the rest to walk away.

Of those that were thus taken I was one. And being, with many more, put into a room under a guard, we were kept there till another Justice, called Sir Thomas Clayton, whom Justice Benett had sent for to join with him in committing us, was come, and then being called forth severally before them, they picked out ten of us, and committed us to Aylesbury gaol, for what neither we nor they knew; for we were not convicted of having either done or said anything which the law could take hold of, for they took us up in the open street, the king’s highway, not doing any unlawful act, but peaceably carrying and accompanying the corpse of our deceased friend to bury it, which they would not suffer us to do, but caused the body to lie in the open street and in the cartway, so that all the travellers that passed by, whether horsemen, coaches, carts, or waggons, were fain to break out of the way to go by it, that they might not drive over it, until it was almost night. And then having caused a grave to be made in the unconsecrated part (as it is accounted) of that which is called the churchyard, they forcibly took the body from the widow whose right and property it was, and buried it there.

When the Justices had delivered us prisoners to the constable, it being then late in the day, which was the seventh day of the week, he, not willing to go so far as Aylesbury, nine long miles, with us that night, nor to put the town to the charge of keeping us there that night, and the first day and night following, dismissed us upon our parole to come to him again at a set hour on the second day morning; whereupon we all went home to our respective habitations, and coming to him punctually according to promise, were by him, without guard, conducted to the prison.

The gaoler, whose name was Nathaniel Birch, had not long before behaved himself very wickedly, with great rudeness and cruelty, to some of our friends of the lower side of the county, whom he, combining with the Clerk of the Peace, whose name was Henry Wells, had contrived to get into his gaol; and after they were legally discharged in court, detained them in prison, using great violence, and shutting them up close in the common gaol among the felons, because they would not give him his unrighteous demand of fees, which they were the more straitened in from his treacherous dealing with them. And they having through suffering maintained their freedom and obtained their liberty, we were the more concerned to keep what they had so hardly gained, and therefore resolved not to make any contract or terms for either chamber-rent or fees, but to demand a free prison, which we did.

When we came in, the gaoler was ridden out to wait on the judges, who came in that day to begin the assize, and his wife was somewhat at a loss how to deal with us; but being a cunning woman, she treated us with great appearance of courtesy, offering us the choice of all her rooms; and when we asked upon what terms, she still referred us to her husband, telling us she did not doubt but that he would be very reasonable and civil to us. Thus she endeavoured to have drawn us to take possession of some of her chambers at a venture, and trust to her husband’s kind usage. But we, who at the cost of our friends had a proof of his kindness, were too wary to be drawn in by the fair words of a woman, and therefore told her we would not settle anywhere till her husband came home, and then would have a free prison, wheresoever he put us.

Accordingly, walking all together into the court of the prison, in which was a well of very good water, and having beforehand sent to a friend in the town, a widow woman, whose name was Sarah Lambarn, to bring us some bread and cheese, we sat down upon the ground round about the well, and when we had eaten, we drank of the water out of the well.

Our great concern was for our friend Isaac Penington, because of the tenderness of his constitution; but he was so lively in his spirit, and so cheerfully given up to suffer, that he rather encouraged us than needed any encouragement from us.

In this posture the gaoler, when he came home, found us, and having before he came to us consulted his wife, and by her understood on what terms we stood, when he came to us he hid his teeth, and putting on a show of kindness, seemed much troubled that we should sit there abroad, especially his old friend Mr. Penington, and thereupon invited us to come in and take what rooms in his house we pleased. We asked upon what terms; letting him know withal that we determined to have a free prison.

He, like the sun and wind in a fable, that strove which of them should take from the traveller his cloak, having like the wind tried rough, boisterous, violent means to our friends before, but in vain, resolved now to imitate the sun, and shine as pleasantly as he could upon us; wherefore he told us we should make the terms ourselves, and be as free as we desired if we thought fit, when we were released, to give him anything, he would thank us for it, and if not, he would demand nothing.

Upon these terms we went in and disposed ourselves, some in the dwelling-house, others in the malt-house, where they chose to be.