QUAKERS' ATTEMPT TO CONVERT THE POPE.
(Vol. iii., p. 302.)
I have never met with any satisfactory account of this singular Quaker aggression. Perhaps it may be a contribution towards one if you can find room for some notice of a tract in my possession. It is entitled, A Narrative of some of the Sufferings of J. P. in the City of Rome. London, printed for Thomas Simmons, at the Bull and Mouth, near Aldersgate, 1661, 4to., pp. 16. This narrative of John Perrot's does not, however, give any particulars respecting his going to Rome, or the proceedings which led to his captivity there, but begins with the words—
"When I was cast into Prison, because I loved the souls of my enemies," &c.;
and after eight pages, chiefly occupied by inflated description of his sorrows, from which one obtains no facts, he tells us that God took pity on him,
"And raised up his little babe, my dear Brother Thomas Hart, to set his tender soul nearer unto my sufferings, and made him take my burdens on his back, and the yoak of my tribulation on his neck, and made him sup of my sore sorrows, and drink of the bleedings of my grief,'—
and so he goes on; but we do not learn what Thomas Hart did, except that he comforted John Perrot in his confinement.
"Moreover," he says, "the everlasting mercies of my God did stir up the bowels of other two of his tender babes, named in the tent Jane Stokes and Charles Baylie, to come to visit me whilest I was as forsaken of all men."
They persevered, he tells us,
"in their pilgrimage until they arrived to Rome, where C. B. offered his life to ransom me, and both of them entered into captivity for the love which they bore to my life."
His Narrative (strictly speaking) contains no further information, but that at the bottom of the tenth page it is dated and signed,
"Written in Rome Prison of Madmen. JOHN."
The remaining six pages of the pamphlet consist of a letter from Charles Baylie, giving an account of his pilgrimage with Jane Stokes, from Dover to Calais, Paris, Marseilles, Genoa, until
"Arriving," he says, "safe at Rome, we were drawn in our lives directly to the place where the dearly beloved J. P. was, and coming to the prison door, I enquired for him, and having answer of his being there, I desired for to speak with him, but it would not be permitted us; So it was said in me, Write unto him, which I did, the which he answered us in the fulness of love, which refreshed us after our weary steps; For our souls were refreshed one in another, though one another's faces we had never seen to the outward, and then we being kept in a holy fear not to do nor act one way nor other, but as we were moved of the Lord, least we should add to his bonds,—I say, being thus kept, we were delivered out of the snare of the fowler, who secretly lay in wait to betray our innocency; And after a little time the Lord showed me I should go to the inquisition, which I did, and enquired for the Inquisitor, as I was showed of the Lord I should do; and when I spoke to him I told him I was come from England for to see my brother J. P.; to which he answered, I should see him, and appointed me to come to a certain place called Minerva, and there, saith he, I will procure you the liberty of the Cardinalls to see him; he had me also to the Inquisition office, where he asked many questions of me concerning our religion, to which I answered in the simplicity of my heart in the fear of the Lord; and at the appointed time I came to the place aforesaid, and there I was showed what further I should do, which was to tender my body for my brother; and so from that time I hardly missed opportunity to speak to them as often as they met: for their manner was thus to meet twice a-week, the one time at Minerva, and the other time at Monte-Cavallo, where the Pope's own dwelling is, where I also did the like, more than once, which stirred them up against me, in great enmity," &c.
I am afraid I am trespassing on your overfilled columns; but—omitting his account of his going to the Jews' synagogue, and of the command which he received to fast twenty days as a testimony against those who falsely stated that John Luffe had fasted nineteen days and died on the twentieth—omitting this, I must give one more extract. Having been detained in one of his visits to the Minerva, he says:
"From thence I was carried to the Inquisition, where I was shut up close, and after I had been there 3 dayes the Lord said to me, Thou must go to the Pazzarella, which was the Prison or Hospital of mad men, where our dear brother was prisoner; and it was also said unto me, Thou shalt also speak to the Pope; And at the 17 dayes end, I was led from the Inquisition towards the other prison, and by the way I met the Pope carried in great pomp; as it was the good will of the Lord that I should speak unto him, men could not prevent it, for I met him towards the foot of a bridge, where I was something nigh him, and when he came against me, the people being on their knees on each side of him, I cried to him with a loud voice in the Italian tongue, To do the thing that was Just, and to release the Innocent; and whilest I was speaking, the man which led me had not power to take me away until I had done, and then he had me to prison where my endeared brother was, where I fasted about 20 dayes as a witness against that bloody generation," &c.
As to how they got out, he only says:
"Soon after my fast, the Lord, by an outstretched arm, wrought our deliverance, being condemned to perpetual galley-slavery, if ever we returned again unto Rome."
It appears, however, that though thus prevented from exercising his office of a missionary in Rome, Charles Baylie did not relinquish it. In the letter just quoted he informs his correspondent (who this was does not appear), that since he had seen his face, he had been several times (as he was while
writing) shut up in strong prisons; and the letter is dated
"The third of the sixth month, 1661. From the Common Gaol in Burkdou, in France, about thirty leagues from Dover, where I am a sufferer for speaking the Word of the Lord to two Priests, saying, All Idols, all Idolatries, and all Idol Priests must perish."
John Perrot seems to have considered that his mission extended over all the world. While in Rome Prison of Madmen, he wrote an address "To all people upon the face of the Earth," which he "sent thence the 8th of the 10th month, 1660;" and he was, no doubt, the author of the tract which follows it (and precedes the narrative) in my volume, entitled "Blessed openings of a day of good things to the Turks. Written to the Heads, Rulers, Ancients, and Elders of their Land, and whomsoever else it may concern," though it is only signed "JOHN." To him also, I suppose, we must ascribe another tract, Discoveries of the Day-dawning to the Jewes. Whereby they may know in what state they shall inherit the riches and glory of Promise. "J. P." is all that is given for the author's name on the title-page, but the tract is signed
יוהן
, that is, John. He too, I presume, was the author of another of the tracts, An Epistle to the Greeks, especially to those in and about Corinth and Athens, &c. Written in Egripo in the Island of Negroponte, by a Servant of the Lord: J. P. He seems to have been at Athens on the 27th day of the 7th month, in the year accounted 1657, being the first day of the week, the day of Greek solemn worship, and to have been "conversant" with Carlo Dessio and Gumeno Stephaci, "called Greek doctors."
S. R. M.
Gloucester.