acted as door-keeper, and was angry at a woman’s “coming with pattens, for they made an impression on the ground, and gave notice to others that there was company there.” She found out the place only “by dogging of people as they went along;” and by inquiries made of certain persons “set commonly at a place called Cherry Garden Stairs.”[115] [Sidenote: 1684.] [Sidenote: PERSECUTION.] Thomas Delaune, a Baptist schoolmaster, and a person of considerable learning, appears as an eminent sufferer in those dark days. He published _A Plea for the Nonconformists_, in answer to a sermon entitled _A Scrupulous Conscience_, published by Dr. Benjamin Calamy, Rector of St. Lawrence Jewry. Delaune simply endeavoured to prove that certain observances in the Episcopal establishment more resembled what is found in the Popish Communion than what is found in primitive antiquity. The publication being treated as a criminal offence, the author was committed to Newgate in November, 1683, and indicted for “a false, seditious, and scandalous libel concerning the Lord the King and the Book of Common Prayer.” The Jury, imbued with the spirit of the age, found him guilty, after which the Judge sentenced him to pay a fine of one hundred marks, to be kept a close prisoner until he paid the money, and to find security for good behaviour during twelve months afterwards. Delaune remained in confinement fifteen months, at the end of which time nature broke down under hardship and suffering. The poor man died, and it is shocking to add, his wife and two small children also expired during the same period within the walls of Newgate.[116] In the same prison Francis Bampfield, a Baptist minister, and an Oxford man, who had suffered repeatedly for his Nonconformity, perished in the month of February, 1684.[117] Of all sects, perhaps, the Quakers suffered most. Their meetings were disturbed by drums and fiddles; women were insulted, their hoods and scarfs torn, and little boys were beaten or whipped with a cat-o’-nine-tails. Seven hundred Friends were reported as being imprisoned in the year 1683. CHAPTER VI. At the time when English gaols were filled with Nonconformists, and English citizens were driven into exile, the English Sovereign offered an asylum to Protestant refugees from France; thus, at the same moment, persecuting his own conscientious subjects, and befriending those like-minded, who suffered from the tyranny of Louis XIV. [Sidenote: FRENCH PROTESTANTS.]