lain commands to baptize with water,
and to partake of bread and wine in commemoration of the redemption of
mankind, he pronounced to be allegorical. He long wandered from place to
place, teaching this strange theology, shaking like an aspen leaf in his
paroxysms of fanatical excitement, forcing his way into churches,
which he nicknamed steeple houses interrupting prayers and sermons with
clamour and scurrility, [31] and pestering rectors and justices with
epistles much resembling burlesques of those sublime odes in which the
Hebrew prophets foretold the calamities of Babylon and Tyre. [32] He
soon acquired great notoriety by these feats. His strange face, his
strange chant, his immovable hat and his leather breeches were known all
over the country; and he boasts that, as soon as the rumour was heard,
"The Man in Leather Breeches is coming," terror seized hypocritical
professors, and hireling priests made haste to get out of his way. [33]
He was repeatedly imprisoned and set in the stocks, sometimes justly,
for disturbing the public worship of congregations, and sometimes
unjustly, for merely talking nonsense. He soon gathered round him a body
of disciples, some of whom went beyond himself in absurdity. He has told
us that one of his friends walked naked through Skipton declaring the
truth. [34] and that another was divinely moved to go naked during
several years to marketplaces, and to the houses of gentlemen and
clergymen. [35] Fox complains bitterly that these pious acts, prompted
by the Holy Spirit, were requited by an untoward generation with
hooting, pelting, coachwhipping and horsewhipping. But, though he
applauded the zeal of the sufferers, he did not go quite to their
lengths. He sometimes, indeed, was impelled to strip himself partially.
Thus he pulled off his shoes and walked barefoot through Lichfield,
crying, "Woe to the bloody city." [36] But it does not appear that he
ever thought it his duty to appear before the public without that decent
garment from which his popular appellation was derived.

If we form our judgment of George Fox simply by looking at his own
actions and writings, we shall see no reason for placing him, morally
or intellectually, above Ludowick Muggleton or Joanna Southcote. But it
would be most unjust to rank the sect which regards him as its founder
with the Muggletonians or the Southcotians. It chanced that among
the thousands whom his enthusiasm infected were a few persons whose
abi