... The King had put it in to the [hands of the] Justices to [paper torn] things and J said J had beene with them and they would [paper torn] me no Right but bad me goe to law but the lawyars i said ar corrup as the maiestrats ar that J cannot vse them but they said go to the maiestrats againe and see if they will do Justice if they will not bring there names and som to testify the goods were mine and i should haue Justice.
And so i came to another sessions and let them know what J had done and what they said and hath waited for Justice agen J went to som of there houses and to the bench and followed them whether they went both day and at nights when they met to gether to know whether they would do me Justice or no Justice to which they hardened there harts and stifened there necks against the widows complaint and Regarded no Just law....
She did not hesitate boldly to warn the King of his errors, as the following passage shows:[120]
How oft haue J come to thee in my old age both for thy reformation and safety, for the good of thy soule And for Justice and equity. Oh that thou would not giue thy Kingdome to yᵉ papists nor thy strength to weomen....
In her efforts to obtain Justice for herself she was never unmindful of the interests of her friends, and in one of her numerous letters to the King and Council she mentions that William Dewsbury, Thomas Goodaire and Henry Jackson, three Yorkshire men, were in Warwick Prison, Francis Howgill in Kendal, and Thomas Taylor in Aylesbury.[121]
In Northampton there are fifteene under the Act of Banishment. J desire that you may set them at libertye besides all the rest that are there. These are all yᵉ Kings Prisoners.[122]
In another letter to the King and Council she mentions that there were forty Friends in Reading prison, and that some had been confined there six or seven years.[123]
In yet another letter addressed to the King she makes allusion to the national calamities, and points a lesson therefrom:[124] “If there be not A speedy repentance judgmᵗˢ will ensue, as Late hath been in England yᵉ Pestilence yᵉ Sword & yᵉ Fire.” It was probably written in the year 1667 or 1668, after the arrival of the Dutch ships in the Thames under De Ruyter. Pepys, under date 11th of June, 1667, in his Diary says: “Pett writes us word that Sheerenesse is lost last night, after two or three hours’ dispute,” and he gives a graphic account of the alarm in the city, consequent on the withdrawal of the soldiers to Chatham and elsewhere: “which looks as if they had a design to ruin the City and give it up to be undone; which, I hear, makes the sober citizens to think very sadly of things.” John Evelyn, too, speaking of the Dutch incursion, says: “The alarme was so greate that it put both Country and Citty into a paniq feare and consternation such as I hope I shall never see more; every body was flying none knew why or whither.”
It is pleasant to turn from sufferings and controversies to events of a domestic character in the strenuous life of Elizabeth Hooton. On 21st September, 1669, her daughter Elizabeth, who had been a sufferer with her mother in New England, was married to Thomas Lambert, of Handsworth, at her mother’s house at Skegby. We have more details of this event in the following record:
Thos: Lamberd of Heansworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire & Elizabeth Hooton of Skegby in Nottinghamshire, Daughter of Elizabeth Hooton did take one another to be husband & wife according to the Church order & yᵉ practice of yᵉ holy men of God in yᵉ Scripture in yᵉ House of Elizabeth Hooton upon yᵉ 21 of yᵉ VII mo in yᵉ year 1669 unto yᵉ Truth of which we have set to our names—