'George' and 'James' were brothers in heart, ever after that short interview in Carlisle Gaol: united in one inseparable purpose. While George was confined, James, the free brother, must carry forward George's work. Triumphantly he did it. By the following year he had earned his place right well among the 'Valiant Sixty' who were then sent forth, 'East and West and South and North,' to 'Publish Truth.' The Eastern Counties, hitherto almost unbroken ground, fell to James's share. Assisted by two other 'Valiants,' Richard Hubberthorne and George Whitehead, the seed was scattered throughout the length and breadth of East Anglia. Within three short years 'gallant Meetings' were already gathered and settled everywhere. James Parnell was the first Quaker preacher to enter the city of Colchester, which was soon to rank third among the strongholds of Quakerism. This boy of eighteen, still so small and delicate in appearance that his enemies taunted him with the name of 'little Quaking lad,' has left an account of one of his first crowded days of work in that city. In the morning, he says, he received any of the townspeople who were minded to come and ask him questions at his lodgings. He was a guest, at the time, of a weaver named Thomas Shortland, who, with his wife Ann, had been convinced shortly before, by their guest's ministry. In adversity also they were soon to prove themselves tried and faithful friends. Later, that same Sunday morning (4th July 1655), James went down the High Street to Saint Nicholas' Church, and, when the sermon was ended, preached to the people in his turn. In the afternoon 'he addressed a very great meeting of about a thousand people, in John Furly's yard, he being mounted above the crowd and speaking out of a hay-chamber window.' Still later, that same day, he not only carried on a discussion with 'the town-lecturer and another priest,' he, the boy of eighteen, but also 'appeared in the evening at a previously advertised meeting held in the schoolroom for the children of the French and Flemish weaver refugees in Colchester, who were being at this time hospitably entertained in John Furly's house.'[28] George Fox says, 'many hundreds of people were convinced by the words and labours of this young minister.' But, far better than preaching to other people, he had by this time learned to rule his own spirit. Once, as he was coming out of the 'Steeple-house of Colchester, called Nicholas,' one person in particular struck him with a great staff and said to him, 'Take that for Jesus Christ's sake,' to whom James Parnell meekly replied, 'Friend, I do receive it for Jesus Christ's sake.' The journey his soul had travelled from the time, only three short years before, when he had described his neighbours as 'the heathen round about,' until the day that he could give such an answer was perhaps a longer one really than all the weary miles he had traversed between Retford and far Carlisle.