toleration was impossible,
and he does not seem to have been able to do more for the Quakers. He
had not, however, forgotten his interview with their chief, and may
have been interested in knowing more especially what had become of
_him_.--Fox, after much wandering in the West without serious
mishap, had fallen among Philistines in Cornwall early in 1656, and
had been arrested, with two companions, for spreading papers and for
general vagrancy and contumacy. He had been in Launceston prison for
some weeks, when Chief Justice Glynne came to hold the assizes in
those parts. There had been the usual encounter between the Judge and
the Quakers on the eternal question of the hats. "Where had they hats
at all, from Moses to Daniel?" said the Chief Justice, rather rashly,
meaning to laugh at the notion that Scripture could be brought to
bear on the question in any way whatever. "Thou mayest read in the
third of Daniel," said Fox, "that the three children were cast into
the fiery furnace, by Nebuchadnezzar's command, with their coats,
their hose, and _their hats on_." Glynne, though he had lost his
joke, and though Fox put him further out of temper by distributing
among the jurymen a paper against swearing, did not behave badly on
the whole, and the issue was the simple recommitment of Fox and his
friends to Launceston prison. There, however, as they would not any
longer pay the jailor the seven shillings a week he demanded for the
board of each, they were put into the most horrible hole in the place
and treated abominably. They were in this predicament when Cromwell
heard of them. "While G. Fox was still in prison, one of his friends
went to Oliver Cromwell, and offered himself, body for body, to lie
in prison in his stead, if he would take him and let G. Fox go at
liberty. But Cromwell said he could not do it, for it was contrary to
law; and, turning to those of his Council, 'Which of you,' quoth he,
'would do as much for me if I were in the same condition?'" An order
was sent by Cromwell to the Governor of Pendennis Castle to enquire
meantime into the treatment of the Launceston prisoners, and their
release followed after a little while. It was noted also, in proof of
his personal kindness towards the Quakers, that, though he received
letters from some of them violently abusive of himself and his
government, he never showed any anger on that account.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sewel's History of the Quakers (ed. 1834) I. 137-173;
Bax