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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY Meanwhile a rigorous persecution was carried on against the Quakers. Their principles absolutely forbade the taking of an oath under any circum- stances ; and one of the earliest acts of the Cavalier Parliament was to prohibit their meetings and impose fines and transportation for refusing an oath legally tendered," Lord Mayor Richard Brown eagerly availed himself of this engine of oppression ; and the Quaker historian Besse gives the names of 230 men and ninety-nine women of the sect who were imprisoned by him during his year of office ending 9 November 1661. In the following year seven of their meeting-houses were raided ; that in Wheeler Street, Spital- fields, five times, and that in Bull and Mouth Yard eight times ; large numbers were imprisoned, and twenty died either in Newgate or soon after their discharge/" On 25 June 1662 John Crook, gentleman, John Bolton, gold- smith, and Isaac Grey, physician, all Quakers, were tried at the Old Bailey for refusing the Oath of Allegiance, and sentenced to forfeiture of goods and imprisonment during the king's pleasure. A Baptist meeting at the Glovers' Hall was also several times broken up in May and June of this year, several persons being arrested on each occasion. ^^ The persecution abated in 1663, but in 1664 was redoubled under the Conventicle Act (17 May), which forbade all meetings for worship otherwise than according to the Book of Common Prayer, on pain of fines, imprisonment, and transportation. '^^ The Quakers' meeting-house in Wheeler Street was raided eight times, that at the Peel in John Street ten times, that at Mile End Green sixteen times, and that in Bull and Mouth Yard twenty-one times ; the arrests varying from eight or ten to 150 a time.^' Besse reports 2,031 Quakers arrested this year in London only, of whom 239 were sentenced to transportation and twenty-five died in prison. On 15 October thirty-nine were charged under the Conven- ticle Act : sixteen of them stood for trial, and the jury refused to convict ; but twenty-three admitted the charge, and on the 17th were sentenced, four married women to a year's imprisonment, and the rest to seven years' trans- portation. In June of the Plague year, 1665, there were 120 Quakers in Newgate under sentence of transportation, but not until 4 August could a ship be chartered to convey them. On that day thirty-seven men and eighteen women were put on board, but they were detained for several months on the river,^* and before they reached Plymouth twenty-two men and six women died. The survivors set sail from Plymouth on 23 February ; the next day they were taken by a Dutch privateer, and at length sent home. Meanwhile, fifty-two Quakers, of whom twenty-two were under sentence of transporta- tion, died of the plague in Newgate. The Conventicle Act aimed at the total extinction of Nonconformity ; but its promoters failed to reckon with the conscience of Puritans, who accounted the parochial congregation to be no church at all, or of ministers Clark, A.B., St. Benet Fink ; Edmund Calamy, B.D., St. Mary Aldermanbury ; Thos. Doolittel, M.A., St. Alphage ; John Goodwin, M.A., private meeting-house in Goodman Street ; Thos. Gouge, M.A., St. Sepulchre ; Henry Jessey, M.A., St. George Southwark ; William Jenkyn, M.A., Christ Church Newgate Street ; Matthew Pool, M.A., St. Michael le Querne ; Lazarus Seaman, D.D., All Hallows Bread Street ; Ralph Jenning, M.A., St. Olave Southwark ; Thos. Wadsworth, M.A., St. Laurence Pountney ; Thos. Watson, M.A., St. Stephen's Walbrook ; (these were of Cambridge) ; Zachary Crofton, M.A., St. Botolph's Aldgate (of Dublin). '^Stat. 13 & 14 Chas. II, cap. I. "Besse, Coll. of bufferings of Quakers, , 368. "Ibid, i, 369-79. "Crosby, Hist, of Engl. Baptists, ii, 170 et seq. '^Stat. 16 Chas. II, cap. 4. "Besse, op. cit. i, 393-405. " Ibid. 406. I 377 48