before Babell was, the earth was one of language; and Nimrod, the cunning hunter before the Lord, which came out of cursed Ham's stock, the originall and builder of Babell, whom God confounded with many languages, and this they say is the original who erred from the spirit and command; and Pilate had his original Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, which crucified Christ and set over him."

It was about 1647 that he began to teach publicly in the neighbourhood of Duckenfield and Manchester, whence he made his way through the midland and northern counties. Teaching more confused and extravagant has seldom been put before men, and yet it found many to listen and assent, because it dwelt so much on those minute regulations and observances which ignorant minds most keenly appreciate and readily seize hold of. "One of the precious truths which were divinely revealed to this new apostle was, that it was falsehood and adulation to use the second person plural instead of the second person singular. Another was, that to talk of the month of March was to worship the bloodthirsty god Mars, and that to talk of Monday was to pay idolatrous homage to the moon. Το say Good morning or Good evening was highly reprehensible; for those phrases evidently imported that God had made bad days and bad nights. A Christian was bound to face death itself rather than touch his hat to the greatest of mankind. When Fox was challenged to produce any Scriptural authority for this dogma, he cited the passage in which it is written that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace with their hats on; and, if his own narrative may be trusted, the Chief Justice of England was altogether unable to

answer this argument except by crying out, 'Take him away, gaoler.'. . . Bowing he strictly prohibited, and, indeed, seemed to consider it as the effect of Satanical influence; for, as he observed, the woman in the Gospel, while she had a spirit of infirmity, was bowed together, and ceased to bow as soon as Divine power had liberated her from the tyranny of the Evil One."

His Scriptural expositions were, in their way, not less absurd and irrational. Passages of the most literal character he construed figuratively; and as figurative passages he construed not less literally, his theology was a curious jumble. Such as it was, however, he taught it everywhere, and with almost heroical persistency; even forcing his way into churches, and interrupting the service or the sermon with loud contradictions and vehement assertions of doctrine. By these exploits he soon acquired the notoriety which, no doubt, he coveted. His strange face, his strange chant, his immovable hat, and his leather breeches were known all over the country; and he boasts that wherever the rumour was heard, "The man in leather breeches is coming," hypocritical professors were seized with alarm, and hireling priests took to flight. He was repeatedly imprisoned; at Derby he languished in a wretched cell for a twelvemonth, and at Carlisle for six months experienced from his gaoler the most brutal treatment. At Ulverstone he underwent the following harsh experience :

"The people were in a rage, and fell upon me in the steeple-house before the justice's face, knocked me down, kicked me, and trampled upon me. So great was the uproar, that some tumbled over their seats for fear. At last he came and took me from the people, led me out of the

steeple-house, and put me into the hands of the constables and other officers, bidding them whip me, and put me out of the town. Many friendly people being come to the market, and some to the steeple-house to hear me, divers of these they knocked down also, and broke their heads, so that the blood ran down several; and Judge Fell's son running after to see what they would do with me, they threw him into a ditch of water, some of them crying: "Knock the teeth out of his head!' When they had hauled me to the common moss-side, a multitude following, the constables and other officers gave me some blows over my back with willow-rods, and thrust me among the rude multitude, who, having furnished themselves with staves, hedge-stakes, holm or holly bushes, fell upon me, and beat me upon the head, arms, and shoulders, till they had deprived me of sense; so that I fell down upon the wet When I recovered again, and saw myself lying in a watery common, and the people standing about me, I lay still a little while, and the power of the Lord sprang through me, and the eternal refreshings revived me, so that I stood up again in the strengthening power of the Eternal God, and stretching out my arms amongst them, I said with a loud voice: 'Strike again! here are my arms, my head, and cheeks!' Then they began to fall out among themselves."

common.

The extravagances of Fox were, of course, out-Heroded by some of his disciples. He tells us that one of them walked naked through Skipton declaring the truth; and that another was divinely moved to go naked during several years to market places, and to the houses of the clergy and gentry. Yet he complains that these outrageous manifestations of fanatical indecency were re

quited by an unbelieving generation with hooting, and pelting, and the horsewhip. But though he applauded the zeal of his followers, some remains of natural modesty prevented him from imitating it. He sometimes indeed would cast off his outer raiment, or his shoes ; but the article of attire from which he obtained his popular nickname he was always careful, however, to wear in public.

Throughout the Protectorate, and the reign of Charles II., and into the reign of William III., this strange prophet-who could never speak intelligibly-continued to expound his views, and gradually succeeded in organising his followers into a new sect. With the help of the more educated among them, such as Robert Barclay, Samuel Fisher, and George Keith, he reduced into some degree of system and form his teachings, and began to enforce a severe discipline. Later in life he visited Ireland, and the young colonies in North America, where he spent nearly two years in making converts to his doctrines. He died in London, in 1690, aged 66. On the morning of the day appointed for his funeral, a great multitude assembled round the meeting-house in Gracechurch Street. Thence the corpse was conveyed to the Quaker burial-ground near Bunhill Fields. Several orators addressed the crowd which filled it—among these, not the least distinguished of Fox's disciples, William Penn.

William Penn, to whom we have made brief allusion in the opening chapter of this book, was the son of Sir William Penn, the famous Admiral, and was born on the 14th of October, 1644, in St. Catherine's, near the Tower of London. When about eleven years old he was sent to School at Chigwell, where, being on one occasion in his chamber alone, "he was so suddenly surprised with an

inward comfort, and (as he thought) an external glory in the room, that he has many times said how from that timehe had the seal of divinity and immortality; that there was also a God, and that the soul of man was capable of enjoying His divine communications." This mental delusion was the effect, no doubt, of an excited imagination, nourished by the boy's solitary pondering over his mother's religious books.

The Admiral, having fallen into disgrace through the failure of the expedition against Hispaniola, removed his family, in 1656, to Ireland, where he had considerable estates, and while professing to be employed in their cultivation, engaged in plots for the restoration of the Stuart dynasty. His son, meantime, had the advantage of receiving instruction from a private tutor, and profited so largely by it that, at the age of 16, he was sent to Oxford, and entered at Christ Church as a gentleman commoner (1660). There a measure of fame accrued to him very speedily through the brilliancy of his scholarship and his skill in all manly accomplishments. But by degrees Penn awoke to a perception of higher and holier things; his religious instinct was revolted by the unbridled licence of the companions among whom he was thrown; and he began to dream dreams of a Commonwealth of Saints which, in the coming years, he hoped. to erect upon enduring foundations among the leafy wildernesses of the New World.

At Oxford, about this time, the doctrines of Fox, the Quaker apostle, were very eagerly discussed. As expounded by one Thomas Loe, or Lowe, they attracted the attention of Penn and his fellow-students; and theapparent simplicity which distinguished them naturally,