"Perhaps the king will hang the Dissenters instead, and yet I should be sorry. They cause no trouble in prison, even although there are so many. The only thing for which I do not like them, is that they look at one so mournfully if he should happen upon oath, or say something that is not over pious."
"Ha, ha! Then must they often look mournfully on you. But I do not like their pious talk. I would rather have to do with prisoners which ought to be here. As it is, the place is full of these pious people who were preaching and praying in barns instead of in the parish church, and singing their own hymns instead of abiding by the Prayer-book, while the blackguards who used to be clapped into prison in Old Nol's time are allowed to go free. Then prisoners were real prisoners—drunkards, and wife-beaters, and thieves, and wizards, and witches; but now we have hardly any but these pious people, who are guilty of nought worse than singing hymns and preaching."
"Still law is law, and the king is king. Besides, what would you, if the king and the bishops will have everybody pray according to the Prayer-book, what right have these Dissenters to pray in their own way?"
After this they went away, and I heard no more of them. For several days moreover there was no change in my condition, except that my prison was clean and my food a little more wholesome. At the end of a week, however, I found myself at liberty to move freely around among my fellow-prisoners, and it was then that I understood the meaning of the conversation I have recorded. For in truth the place seemed full of men who were sent hither because they had disobeyed certain Acts of Parliament, the which, as I understood it, meant that if any number of people worshipped God in any other way than that prescribed by the Prayer-book, or in any other place than the parish church, their meetings could at once be pounced upon by the constables, and the offenders haled before the magistrates, and sentenced to imprisonment. I was also told that these Acts prohibited any person who had been guilty of preaching the Gospel, other than those empowered by the laws of the country, living within five miles of the town where they had preached. With this news there came to me also the information that about two thousand clergymen, most of whom were pious Godfearing men, were ejected from their parishes because they could not obey laws which they believed were contrary to the laws of God. Moreover, many of these clergymen, believing they were called of God to preach, had continued to minister to their flocks, with the result that the prisons of England were full of them.
In addition to this, the law, having regarded not only Nonconformist preachers but Nonconformist worshippers as equally guilty, meetings were broken up, and the guilty people were clapped into gaol without more ado.
I had never taken any considerable interest in such matters, yet now that I saw these people in gaol, and heard their stories, I realized that what the squire and vicar of the parish where I had seen such a strange sight in the county of Kent had predicted had come to pass.
One old man interested me greatly, for he spoke kindly to me, and inquired lovingly after my condition. He had, so he told me, married late in life, and had a family of a wife and five children. When the Act of Uniformity was passed he was cast forth from his parish because he would not be re-ordained, and then having been guilty of preaching the Gospel to a few of his flock, and praying with them, he was seized by the magistrates and cast into prison.
"And what hath become of your wife and family?" I asked.
"Ah, that is what grieves me sorely," he replied; "for myself I do not mind one whit, except that I can no longer proclaim the glad news which I was called to preach; but to think of my poor delicate wife wandering helpless and homeless with my dear little ones grieves me beyond words. I can do nought but pray for them, the which I do continually."
"But why could you not obey the law?" I asked.