hich Fox and the early Quakers so long ago assumed. No one
can pretend for a moment that in point of spiritual sagacity and
capacity, Fox's mind was unsound. Everyone who confronted him
personally, from Oliver Cromwell down to county magistrates and
jailers, seems to have acknowledged his superior power. Yet from the
point of view of his nervous constitution, Fox was a psychopath or
detraque of the deepest dye. His Journal abounds in entries of this
sort:--

"As I was walking with several friends, I lifted up my head and saw
three steeple-house spires, and they struck at my life. I asked them
what place that was? They said, Lichfield. Immediately the word of
the Lord came to me, that I must go thither. Being come to the house
we were going to, I wished the friends to walk into the house, saying
nothing to them of whither I was to go. As soon as they were gone I
stept away, and went by my eye over hedge and ditch till I came within
a mile of Lichfield where, in a great field, shepherds were keeping
their sheep. Then was I commanded by the Lord to pull off my shoes. I
stood still, for it was winter: but the word of the Lord was like a
fire in me. So I put off my shoes and left them with the shepherds;
and the poor shepherds trembled, and were astonished. Then I walked on
about a mile, and as soon as I was got within the city, the word of the
Lord came to me again, saying: Cry, 'Wo to the bloody city of
Lichfield!' So I went up and down the streets, crying with a loud
voice, Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield! It being market day, I went
into the market-place, and to and fro in the several parts of it, and
made stands, crying as before, Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield! And
no one laid hands on me. As I went thus crying through the streets,
there seemed to me to be a channel of blood running down the streets,
and the market-place appeared like a pool of blood. When I had declared
what was upon me, and felt myself clear, I went out of the town in
peace; and returning to the shepherds gave them some money, and took my
shoes of them again. But the fire of the Lord was so on my feet, and
all over me, that I did not matter to put on my shoes again, and was at
a stand whether I should or no, till I felt freedom from the Lord so to
do: then, after I had washed my feet, I put on my shoes again. After
this a deep consideration came upon me, for what reason I should be
sent to cry against that city, and call it Th