But his oddities attracted still more notice than his preaching. He wore very long hair, and clothed himself in a suit of leather; things, however, of which too much has been made by his biographers, seeing that this sort of dress was worn only for a time, and was adapted for rough use, while it was not so very strange in an age of leather doublets. Nor was his numbering the days of the week, instead of calling them by their usual names, so peculiar as is supposed, since it appears to have been the practice of Independents and Baptists to do the same. Nor did "thee" and "thou" sound so strange as in the present day. But the stern refusal to take off his hat before anybody, even before magistrates; the violence with which he assailed "priests," and all ministers; the terms he applied to parish churches, calling them "steeple-houses;" the encouragement he gave to the preaching of women; and the manner in which he publicly testified against evil, made this spiritual reformer appear a most eccentric personage, and brought down upon him ridicule and abuse, and a great deal of what was very much worse.[373] His testimonies were delivered at wakes, at fairs, at inns, in courts of justice, and in places of worship. When the bell rang for church, it smote his soul as a sign that the Gospel was going to be sold, not given without money and without price; and off the honest enthusiast went to the steeple-house, to interrupt the minister, and protest against his ministry. This, of course, could not be tolerated, and presently he found himself shut up in filthy cells, or set in the public stocks. The punishment was severe, monstrously and beyond all proportion to the offence, but the offender clearly put himself in a false position. With no taste for Gothic architecture, looking upon cathedrals as popish mass-houses, he could not endure the sight of the beautiful spires of Lichfield; so, pulling off his shoes, he walked through the streets, and thinking of pagan persecutions there in old times, cried "Woe, woe to the bloody city."[374] The magistrates of Derby most unjustly convicted him of blasphemy, under the late Act against atheistical opinions, and sentenced him to six months' confinement in the House of Correction. He subsequently moderated some of his excesses, but this did not secure him against outrageous persecutions and intolerable sufferings. The Quaker reveals his character as he tells his story. "When the Lord first sent me forth in the year 1643, I was sent as an innocent lamb (and young in years) amongst (men in the nature of) wolves, dogs, bears, lions and tigers into the world, which the devil had made like a wilderness, no right way then found out of it. And I was sent to turn people from darkness to the light, which Christ, the Second Adam, did enlighten them withal; that so they might see Christ, their way to God, with the Spirit of God, which He doth pour upon all flesh, that with it they might have an