“She was a woman endued with many particular virtues, well worthy the imitation of all good Christians, had not error in other things, especially a spirit of strange unparalleled opinionativeness and obstinacy in her private conceits, spoiled her.”[1057]
Pagitt says that she was a school teacher of superior excellence. She was particularly careful in her dealings with the poor. He gives her reasons thus:—
“This she professed to do out of conscience, as believing she must one day come to be judged for all things done in the flesh. Therefore she resolved to go by the safest rule, rather against than for her private interest.”[1058]
Pagitt gives her crime in the following words:—
“At last for teaching only five days in the week, and resting upon Saturday, it being known upon what account she did it, she was carried to the new prison in Maiden Lane, a place then appointed for the restraint of several other persons of different opinions from the church of England.”[1059]
Observe the crime: it was not what she did, for a first-day person might have done the same, but because she did it to obey the fourth commandment. Her motive exposed her to the vengeance of the authorities. She was a woman of indomitable courage, and would not purchase her liberty by renouncing the Lord’s Sabbath. During her long imprisonment, Pagitt says that some one wrote her thus:—
“Your constant suffering would be praiseworthy, were it for truth; but being for error, your recantation will be both more acceptable to God, and laudable before men.”[1060]
But her faith and patience held out till she was released by death.
“Mrs. Trask lay fifteen or sixteen years a prisoner for her opinion about the Saturday Sabbath; in all which time she would receive no relief from anybody, notwithstanding she wanted much: alleging that it was written, ‘It is more blessed ... to give than to receive.’ Neither would she borrow, because it was written, ‘Thou shalt lend to many nations, and shalt not borrow.’ So she deemed it a dishonor to her head, Christ, either to beg or borrow. Her diet for the most part during her imprisonment, that is, till a little before her death, was bread and water, roots and herbs; no flesh, nor wine, nor brewed drink. All her means was an annuity of forty shillings a year; what she lacked more to live upon she had of such prisoners as did employ her sometimes to do business for them.”[1061]
Pagitt, who was the cotemporary of Trask, thus states the principles of the Sabbatarians of that time, whom he calls Traskites:—