After a visit at Kingston, I went to London, where I found the Baptists and Socinians, with some old apostates, grown very rude, having printed many books against us; so that I had a great travail in the Lord's power, before I could get clear of that city. But blessed be the Lord, his power came over them, and all their lying, wicked, scandalous books were answered.
[After a visit with William Penn at the latter's home at Rickmansworth, he started on his journey north towards Swarthmore, accompanied by his wife, two of her daughters and his son-in-law, Thomas Lower, a journey which led to more than a year's imprisonment—his last imprisonment, as it proved.]
At night, as I was sitting at supper, I felt I was taken; yet I said nothing then to any one of it. But getting out next morning, we travelled into Worcestershire, and went to John Halford's, at Armscott, where we had a very large and precious meeting in his barn, the Lord's powerful presence being eminently with and amongst us.
After the meeting, Friends being most of them gone, as I was sitting in the parlour, discoursing with some Friends, Henry Parker, a justice, came to the house, and with him one Rowland Hains, a priest of Hunniton, in Warwickshire. This justice heard of the meeting by means of a woman Friend, who, being nurse to a child of his, asked leave of her mistress to go to the meeting to see me; and she speaking of it to her husband, he and the priest plotted together to come and break it up and apprehend me.
But from their sitting long at dinner, it being the day on which his child was sprinkled, they did not come till the meeting was over, and Friends mostly gone. But though there was no meeting when they came, yet I, who was the person they aimed at, being in the house, Henry Parker took me, and Thomas Lower for company with me; and though he had nothing to lay to our charge, sent us both to Worcester jail, by a strange sort of mittimus.
Being thus made prisoners, without any probable appearance of being released before the quarter-sessions at soonest, we got some Friends to accompany my wife and her daughter into the north, and we were conveyed to Worcester. Thence, by the time I thought my wife would reach home, I wrote her the following letter:
"Dear Heart:
"Thou seemedst to be a little grieved when I was speaking of prisons, and when I was taken. Be content with the will of the Lord God. For when I was at John Rous's, at Kingston, I had a sight of my being taken prisoner; and when I was at Bray Doily's, in Oxfordshire, as I sat at supper, I saw I was taken, and I saw I had a suffering to undergo. But the Lord's power is over all; blessed be His holy name forever!
G. F."[173]
[This imprisonment began December 17th, 1673. The case was brought before the sessions on the 21st of January, 1674. "When we came in," he writes, "they were stricken with paleness in their faces, and it was some time before anything was spoken; insomuch that a butcher in the hall said, 'What, are they afraid? Dare not the justices speak to them?'" There was manifestly no case against them on the mittimus, but the judge, at the suggestion of the "priest," took the easy way to catch them. "You, Mr. Fox, are a famous man, and all this may be true which you have said; but, that we may be the better satisfied, will you take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy?" The usual refusal was given, followed with the penalty of præmunire. During this long imprisonment he had the promise of a pardon from the king, but he refused to get his liberty by any method which implied that he had done wrong and needed pardon. At the next sessions, in April, he got a temporary liberty, so that he went to London and attended yearly meeting, after which he returned to Worcester for a new trial, which ended in the same old way. Meantime the strong man's constitution was yielding to the incessant strain upon it.]
About this time I had a fit of sickness, which brought me very low and weak in my body; and I continued so a pretty while, insomuch that some Friends began to doubt of my recovery. I seemed to myself to be amongst the graves and dead corpses; yet the invisible power did secretly support me, and conveyed refreshing strength into me, even when I was so weak that I was almost speechless. One night, as I was lying awake upon my bed in the glory of the Lord which was over all, it was said unto me that the Lord had a great deal more work for me to do for Him before He took me to Himself.