FOOTNOTE:
[3] I.e., passion.
[GEORGE FOX THE QUAKER (1654).]
Source.—Journal of George Fox. London, 1694. Vol. i., pp. 136-138.
After this I went into the country, and had several Meetings, and came to Swannington where the soldiers came again, but the Meeting was quiet, and the Lord's power was over all, and the soldiers did not meddle. Then I went to Leicester, and from Leicester to Whetstone. But before the meeting began, there came about seventeen troopers of Colonel Hacker's regiment, with his Marshal, and they took me up before the meeting, though Friends were beginning to gather together, for there were several Friends come out of several parts. I told the Marshal, "He might let all the Friends go, I would answer for them all;" whereupon he took me and let all the Friends go; only Alexander Parker went along with me. At night they had me before Col. Hacker and his Major, and Captains, a great company of them; and a great deal of discourse we had about the priests, and about meetings (for at this time there was a noise of a plot against O. Cromwell).... Then Col. Hacker asked me again "If I would go home and stay at home?" I told him "If I should promise him so, that would manifest that I was guilty of something, to go home and make my home a prison. And if I went to Meetings, they would say I broke their Order." Therefore I told them I should go to Meetings as the Lord should order me; and therefore could not submit to their requirings; but I said we were a peaceable people. "Well then," said Colonel Hacker, "I will send you to-morrow morning by six o'clock to my Lord Protector by Captain Drury, one of his life guard." That night I was kept a prisoner at the Marshalsea; and the next morning by the sixth hour I was ready, and delivered to Captain Drury. I desired he would let me speak with Col. Hacker before I went, and he had me to his bedside. Col. Hacker at me presently again "To go home and keep no more Meetings." I told him I could not submit to that.... "Then," said he, "you must go before the Protector." Whereupon I kneeled on his Bedside and besought the Lord to forgive him, for he was as Pilate, though he would wash his hands; and when the day of his misery and trial should come upon him, I bid him then remember what I had said to him.... Afterwards when this Col. Hacker was in prison in London, a day or two before he was executed, he was put in mind of what he had done against the innocent....
Now was I carried up a prisoner by Captain Drury aforesaid from Leicester.... So he brought me to London, and lodged me at the Mermaid over against the Mews at Charing Cross. And on the way as we travelled I was moved of the Lord to warn people at the inns and places where I came of the day of the Lord that was coming upon them. And William Dewsbury and Marmaduke Stor being in prison at Northampton, he let me go and visit them.
After Captain Drury had lodged me at the Mermaid, he left me there and went to give the protector an account of me. And when he came to me again, he told me the Protector did require that I should promise not to take up a carnal sword or weapon against him or the government as it then was, and that I should write it, in what words I saw good, and set my hand to it. I said little in reply to Captain Drury. But the next morning, I was moved of the Lord to write a paper "to the Protector by the name of Oliver Cromwell," wherein I did in the presence of God declare that I did deny the wearing and drawing of a carnal sword, or any other outward weapon against him or any man. And that I was sent of God to stand a witness against all violence and against the works of Darkness, to turn the people from Darkness to Light and to bring them from the occasion of war and fighting to the peaceable Gospel.... When I had written what the Lord had given me to write, I set my name to it and gave it to Captain Drury to give to O. Cromwell, which he did.
Then after some time Captain Drury brought me before the Protector himself at Whitehall. It was in a morning before he was dressed.... When I came in, I was moved to say "Peace be in this House," and I bid him keep in the fear of God that he might receive wisdom from him.... I spake much to him of Truth, and a great deal of Discourse I had with him about Religion; wherein he carried himself very moderately. But he said we quarrelled with the priests whom he called Ministers. I said we did not quarrel with them, but they quarrelled with me and my friends. "But," I said, "if we own the Prophets, Christ and the Apostles, we cannot hold up such teachers, prophets and shepherds, as the Prophets, Christ and the Apostles declared against...." As I spake, he would several times say it was very good, and it was truth. I told him that all Christendom (so-called) had the Scriptures, but they wanted the power and spirit that they had which gave forth the Scriptures.... Many more words I had with him; but people coming in, I drew a little back. And as I was turning, he catched me by the hand and with tears in his eyes, said "Come again to my House, for if thou and I were but an hour of a day together, we should be nearer one to the other," adding, that he wished me no more ill than he did to his own soul. I told him; if he did, he wronged his own soul. And I bid him hearken to God's voice, ... and if he did not hear God's voice, his heart would be hardened. And he said: it was true. Then went I out. And when Captain Drury came out after me, he told me his Lord Protector said, I was at liberty, and might go whither I would. Then I was brought into a great Hall where the Protector's gentlemen were to dine, and I asked them what they did bring me thither for. They said it was by the Protector's order that I might dine with them. I bid them let the Protector know I would not eat a bit of his bread nor drink a sup of his drink. When he heard this he said: "Now I see there is a people risen and come up, that I cannot win either with gifts, honours, offices or places: but all other sects and people I can." But it was told him again, that we had forsook our own and were not like to look for such things from him.
Now I, being set at liberty, went up to the Inn again, where Captain Drury had at first lodged me. This Captain Drury, though he sometimes carried fairly, was an enemy to me and to truth and opposed it ... and would scoff at trembling and call us Quakers, as the Presbyterians and Independents had nicknamed us before. But afterwards he came on a time and told me, that as he was lying on his bed to rest himself in the daytime, a sudden trembling seized on him that his joints knocked together ... and he was so shaken that he had not strength enough to rise. But he felt the power of the Lord was upon him and he tumbled off his bed and cried to the Lord and said, he would never speak against the Quakers more, such as trembled at the word of God.
[KILLING NO MURDER (1657).]
(Preface.)
Source.—Harleian Miscellany. Vol. IV., p. 289.
To His Highness Oliver Cromwell.
May it please Your Highness,
How I have spent some hours of the leisure your Highness has been pleased to give me, the following paper will give your Highness an account; how you will please to interpret it, I cannot tell; but I can with confidence say, my intention in it is to procure your Highness that justice nobody yet does you, and to let the people see, the longer they defer it, the greater injury they do both themselves and you. To your Highness justly belongs the honour of dying for the people; and it cannot choose but be an unspeakable consolation to you, in the last moments of your life, to consider with how much benefit to the world you are like to leave it. It is then only, my Lord, that the title you now usurp will be truly yours: you will then be indeed the Deliverer of your country, and free it from a bondage little inferior to that from which Moses delivered his. You will then be that true Reformer which you would now be thought; religion shall then be restored, liberty asserted, and parliaments have those privileges they have fought for. We shall then hope that other laws will have place besides those of the sword, and justice shall be otherwise defined than as the Will and Pleasure of the Strongest; and we shall then hope men will keep oaths again, and not have the necessity of being false and perfidious to preserve themselves and to be like their rulers. All this we hope from your Highness's happy expiration, who are the true father of your country: for while you live, we can call nothing ours, and it is from your death that we hope for our inheritances. Let this consideration arm and fortify your Highness's mind against the fear of death and the terrors of your evil conscience, that the good you will do by your death will somewhat balance the evils of your life. And if, in the black catalogue of high malefactors, few can be found that have lived more to the affliction and disturbance of mankind than your Highness hath done; yet your greatest enemies will not deny, but there are likewise as few that have expired more to the universal benefit of mankind, than your Highness is like to do. To hasten this great good is the chief end of my writing this paper, and if it have the effects I hope it will, your Highness will be quickly out of reach of men's malice and your enemies will only be able to wound you in your memory, which strokes you will not feel. That your Highness may speedily be in this security, is the universal wish of your grateful country; this is the desire and prayer of the good and of the bad, and, it may be, is the only thing wherein all sects and factions do agree in their devotions, and is our only Common Prayer. But amongst all that put in their requests and supplications for your Highness's speedy deliverance from all earthly troubles, none is more assiduous, nor more fervent than he that (with the rest of this nation) hath the honour to be, may it please your Highness,
Your Highness's present slave and vassal,
W. A.
[CHARACTER OF CROMWELL.]
Source.—Sir Philip Warwick's Memoirs, 1701. P. 247.
I have no mind to give an ill character of Cromwell; for in his conversation towards me he was ever friendly; tho' at the latter end of the day finding me ever incorrigible, and having some inducements to suspect me a tamperer, he was sufficiently rigid. The first time that ever I took notice of him, was in the very beginning of the Parliament held in November, 1640, when I vainly thought myself a courtly young Gentleman: (for we Courtiers valued our selves much upon our good clothes). I came one morning into the House well clad, and perceived a Gentleman speaking (whom I knew not) very ordinarily apparelled; for it was a plain cloth suit, which seemed to have been made by an ill country-tailor; his linen was plain, and not very clean; and I remember a speck or two of blood upon his little band, which was not much larger than his collar; his hat was without a hat-band: his stature was of a good size, his sword stuck close to his side, his countenance swoln and reddish, his voice sharp and untunable, and his eloquence full of fervour; for the subject matter would not bear much of reason; it being in behalf of a servant of Mr. Prynne's, who had dispersed libells against the Queen for her dancing and such innocent and courtly sports; and he aggravated the imprisonment of this man by the Council Table unto that height, that one would have believed the very Government itself had been in great danger by it. I sincerely profess it lessened much my reverence unto that great council; for he was very much hearkened unto. And yet I lived to see this very Gentleman, whom out of no ill will to him I thus describe,—by multiplied good successes, and by real (but usurped) power, (having had a better tailor, and more converse among good company)—in my own eye, when for six weeks together I was a prisoner in his Serjeant's hands, and daily waited at Whitehall, appear of a great and majestic deportment and comely presence. Of him therefore I will say no more, but that verily I believe, he was extraordinarily designed for those extraordinary things, which one while most wickedly and facinorously he acted, and at another as successfully and greatly performed.
UNWIN BROTHERS, LTD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND WOKING.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.
Two of the internal references given in "NOTE TO THIS VOLUME" on [page vii] are incorrect. "p. 82" has been changed to "p. 80", and "pp. 83-86" to "pp. 81-84".
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
[Pg viii], 'Reliquiæ Baxterianæ' replaced by 'Reliquæ Baxterianæ'.
[Pg 23], 'doth esfsoones' replaced by 'doth eftsoones'.
[Pg 37], 'laws and statues' replaced by 'laws and statutes'.