may hear and finally determine in the affair."

This act had a most dreadful effect upon the Quakers, though it was well
known and notorious that these conscientious persons were far from
sedition or disaffection to the government. George Fox, in his address
to the king, acquaints him, that three thousand and sixty-eight of their
friends had been imprisoned since his majesty's restoration; that their
meetings were daily broken up by men with clubs and arms, and their
friends thrown into the water, and trampled under foot till the blood
gushed out, which gave rise to their meeting in the open streets. A
relation was printed, signed by twelve witnesses, which says, that more
than four thousand two hundred Quakers were imprisoned; and of them five
hundred were in and about London, and the suburbs; several of whom were
dead in the jails.

However, they even gloried in their sufferings, which increased every
day; so that in 1665, and the intermediate years, they were harassed
without example. As they persisted resolutely to assemble, openly, at
the Bull and Mouth, before mentioned, the soldiers, and other officers,
dragged them from thence to prison, till Newgate was filled with them,
and multitudes died of close confinement, in that and other jails.

Six hundred of them, says an account published at this time, were in
prison, merely for religion's sake, of whom several were banished to the
plantations. In short, says Mr. Neale, the Quakers gave such full
employment to the informers, that they had less leisure to attend the
meetings of other dissenters.

Yet, under all these calamities, they behaved with patience and modesty
towards the government, and upon occasion of the Rye-house plot in 1682,
thought proper to declare their innocence of that sham plot, in an
address to the king, wherein, appealing to the Searcher of all hearts,
they say, their principles do not allow them to take up defensive arms,
much less to avenge themselves for the injuries they received from
others: that they continually pray for the king's safety and
preservation; and therefore take this occasion humbly to beseech his
majesty to compassionate their suffering friends, with whom the jails
are so filled, that they want air, to the apparent hazard of their
lives, and to the endangering an infection in divers places. Besides,
many houses, shops, barns, and fields are ransacked, and the goods,
corn, and cattle swept away, to the discouraging trade a