A Book of Quaker SaintsHodgkin, L. V. (Lucy Violet)
Religion
A Book of Quaker Saints
Hodgkin, L. V. (Lucy Violet)
Society of Friends
The Journal continues (but it was written many years later, remember,
when the account of what had happened could not bring anyone into
trouble): 'And ye next morning I went over in a boat to James
Lancaster's, and as soon as I came to land there rushed out about
forty men, with staffs, clubs, and fishing-poles, and fell upon me
with them, beating, punching, and thrust me backwards into the sea.
And when they had thrust me almost into the sea, I stood up and went
into the middle of them again, but they all laid on me again and
knocked me down and mazed me. And when I was down and came to myself,
I looked up and saw James Lancaster's wife throwing stones at my face,
and her husband lying over me, to keep the stones and blows off me.
For the people had persuaded James's wife that I had bewitched her
husband, and had promised her that if she would let them know when I
came hither they would be my death.
'So at last I got up in the power of God over them all, and they beat
me down into the boat. And so James Lancaster came into the boat to me
and so he set me over the water.
'And James Nayler we saw afterwards that they were beating of him. For
while they were beating of me, he walked up into a field, and they
never minded him till I was gone, and then they fell upon him, and all
their cry was "Kill him!" "Kill him!" When I was come over to the town
again, on the other side of the water, the townsmen rose up with
pitchforks, flails, and staves to keep me out of the town, crying,
"Kill him! knock him on the head! bring the cart and carry him to the
churchyard." And so they abused me and guarded me with all those
weapons a pretty way out of the town, and there at last, the Lord's
power being over them all, they left me. Then James Lancaster went
back again to look for James Nayler. So I was alone and came to a
ditch of water and washed me, for they had all dirted me, and wet and
mired my clothes, my hands and my face.
'I walked a matter of three miles to Thomas Hutton's, where Thomas
Lawson the priest lodged, who was convinced. And I could hardly speak
to them when I came in I was so bruised. And so I told them where I
had left James Nayler, and they went and took each of them a horse,
and brought him thither that night. And I went to bed, but I was so
weak with bruises that I was not able to turn me. And the next day,
they hearing of it at Swarthmoor, they sent a horse for me. And as I
was riding the horse knocked his foot against a stone and stumbled, so
that it shook me so and pained me, as it seemed worse to me than all
the blows, my body was so tortured. So I came to Swarthmoor, and my
body was exceedingly bruised.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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