HISTORY OF THE RISE, INCREASE, AND PROGRESS, OF THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE CALLED QUAKERS. INTERMIXED WITH SEVERAL REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. WRITTEN ORIGINALLY IN LOW DUTCH, AND ALSO TRANSLATED BY HIMSELF INTO ENGLISH. BY WILLIAM SEWEL. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. PHILADELPHIA: BENJAMIN & THOMAS KITE, NO. 20, NORTH THIRD STREET, 1823. HARVARD Friends Historical Library Skerrett-Locust street, THE. HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE CALLED QUAKERS. THE SEVENTH BOOK. HAVING now left America, and being returned to England, let us go and see the state of persecution at London, where desperate fury now raged; though it was not in that chief city alone the Quakers, so called, were most grievously persecuted: for a little before this time there was published in print a short relation of the persecution throughout all England, signed by twelve persons, showing that more than four thousand and two hundred of those called Quakers, both men and women, were in prison in England; and denoting the number of them that were imprisoned in each county, either for fre quenting meetings, or for denying to swear, &c. Many of these had been grievously beaten, or their clothes torn or taken away from them; and some were put into such stinking dungeons, that some great men said, they would not have put their hunting dogs there. Some prisons were crowded full both of men and women, so that there was not sufficient room for all to sit down at once; and in Cheshire sixty-eight persons were in this manner locked up in a small room; an evident sign that they were a harmless people, that would not make any resistance, or use force. |