The sight of this smote him, and made him sit down among them. And after the meeting was ended, and the Friends departed to their several homes, addressing himself to Mary Penington, as the mistress of the house, he could not enough magnify the bravery and courage of the Friends, nor sufficiently debase himself. He told her how long he had been a professor, what pains he had taken, what hazards he had run, in his youthful days, to get to meetings; how, when the ways were forelaid and passages stopped, he swam through rivers to reach a meeting; and now, said he, that I am grown old in the profession of religion, and have long been an instructor and encourager of others, that I should thus shamefully fall short myself, is matter of shame and sorrow to me.
Thus he bewailed himself to her. And when we came back he renewed his complaints of himself to us, with high aggravations of his own cowardice; which gave occasion to some of the Friends tenderly to represent to him the difference between profession and possession, form and power.
He was glad, he said, on our behalfs, that we came off so well, and escaped imprisonment.
But when he understood that George Whitehead and I were liable to an after-reckoning next morning, he was troubled, and wished the morning was come and gone, that we might be gone with it.
We spent the evening in grave conversation and in religious discourses, attributing the deliverance we hitherto had to the Lord. And the next morning, when we were up and had eaten, we tarried some time to see what the Justice would do further with us, and to discharge our engagement to him; the rest of the Friends, who were before fully discharged, tarrying also with us to see the event.
And when we had stayed so long that on all hands it was concluded we might safely go, George Whitehead and I left a few words in writing to be sent to the Justice if he sent after us, importing that we had tarried till such an hour, and not hearing from him, did now hold ourselves free to depart, yet so as that if he should have occasion to send for us again, upon notice thereof we would return.
This done, we took our leave of the family and one of another; they who were for London taking horse, and I and my companions, setting forth on foot for Oxfordshire, went to Wycombe, where we made a short stay to rest and refresh ourselves, and from thence reached our respective homes that night.
After I had spent some time at home, where, as I had no restraint, so (my sisters being gone) I had now no society, I walked up to Chalfont again, and spent a few days with my friends there.
As soon as I came in I was told that my father had been there that day to see Isaac Penington and his wife, but they being abroad at a meeting, he returned to his inn in the town, where he intended to lodge that night. After supper Mary Penington told me she had a mind to go and see him at his inn (the woman of the house being a friend of ours), and I went with her. He seemed somewhat surprised to see me there, because he thought I had been at home at his house; but he took no notice of my hat—at least showed no offence at it, for, as I afterwards understood, he had now an intention to sell his estate, and thought he should need my concurrence therein, which made him now hold it necessary to admit me again into some degree of favour. After we had tarried some little time with him, she rising up to be gone, he waited on her home, and having spent about an hour with us in the family, I waited on him back to his inn. On the way he invited me to come up to London to see my sisters, the younger of whom was then newly married, and directed me where to find them, and also gave me money to defray my charges.
Accordingly I went; yet stayed not long there, but returned to my friend Isaac Penington’s, where I made a little stay, and from thence went back to Crowell.