any processes before it gains its perfect form
and pure ringing note. And a whole lifetime of joys and sorrows had
been needed to develop the 'stiffness' (or steadfastness, as we should
call it now) and purity of character that astonished the soldiers in
their prisoner. There will not be much story in this history of George
Fox's early days, but it is the foundation-stone on which most of the
later stories will be built.

* * * * *

It was in July 1624, the last year in which James the First, King of
England, ruled in his palace at Whitehall, that far away in a quiet
Leicestershire village their first baby was born to a weaver and his
wife. They lived in a small cottage with a thatched roof and wooden
shutters, in a village then known as 'Drayton-in-the-Clay,' because of
the desolate waters of the marshlands that lay in winter time close
round the walls of the little hamlet. Even though the fens and marshes
have now long ago been drained and turned into fertile country, the
village is still called 'Fenny Drayton.' The weaver's name was
Christopher Fox. His wife's maiden name had been Mary Lago; and the
name they gave to their first little son was George.

Mary Lago came 'of the stock of the martyrs': that is to say, either
her parents or her grand-parents had been put to death for their
faith. They had been burnt at the stake, probably, in one of the
persecutions in the reign of Queen Mary. From her 'martyr stock' Mary
Lago must have learned, when she was quite a little girl, to worship
God in purity of faith. Later on, after she had become the mother of
little George, it was no wonder that her baby son sitting on her knee,
looking up into her face, or listening to her stories, learned from
the very beginning to try to be 'Pure as a Bell.'

Mary Lago's husband, Christopher Fox, did not come 'of the stock of
the martyrs,' but evidently he had inherited from his ancestors plenty
of tough courage and sturdy sense. Almost the only story remembered
about him is that one day he stuck his cane into the ground after
listening to a long dispute and exclaimed: 'Now I see that if a man
will but stick to the truth it will bear him out.'

When little George grew old enough to scramble down from his mother's
knee and to walk with unsteady steps across the stone-flagged floor of
the cottage, there was his weaver father sitting at his loom, making a
pleasant rhythmic sound that filled the small house