The storm continued for two years; and as it terminated the series under the Stuarts, it seems to have been the worst--in this respect resembling the persecution under the Emperor Diocletian. The Quakers stated, in their petition to King James, that there had been of late above one thousand five hundred Friends in prison, of whom one thousand three hundred and eighty-three remained unreleased. Three hundred and fifty had died in gaol, since the year 1660; nearly one hundred of them since the year 1680. William Penn reckoned that altogether, more than five thousand perished for the sake of religion;[150] and Jeremy White is said to have collected a list of sixty thousand, who had suffered in some way or other for conscientious opinions. Making a large abatement from such rumours, there must have been an enormous extent of imprisonment, exile, extortion, oppression, and misery inflicted during those two reigns to account for such a rumour having been listened to for a moment.[151] Sulpicius Severus, speaking of the persecution under Diocletian, remarked, that Christians never achieved a more glorious victory than when they could not be subdued by years of slaughter. And, in the same spirit, Neal observes, that Nonconformists did not decrease, amidst all the engines of intolerance which were worked against them; their continuance and increase being attributed to their firmness of character, their practical and awakening ministry, their severe morality, their domestic religion, their able and learned ministers, the disgust excited by the conduct of their adversaries, and the reaction produced by carrying Tory principles to an unbearable extreme. In statements of this kind an author’s eye is wont to rest mainly on fines, imprisonments, and violent assaults. But there were other persecutions which Nonconformists had to endure. Much is made, by our High Church brethren, of the persecution which lingers amidst legal toleration. They point to attacks in the newspapers, to slander privately circulated, to innuendo and defamation, to irritation and annoyance in subtle forms; but no social persecution complained of in the present day, can be compared with what Nonconformists, in addition to fines, imprisonments, and brutal treatment, had to endure, when such a Christian gentleman and scholar as John Howe scarcely dared to walk the streets. In the library of Canterbury Cathedral is a large volume of MS. plays, recitations, and performances, in the reign of Charles II., wherein Roman Catholics and Nonconformists of all kinds are lampooned and abused with a vast deal more of coarseness than wit. Such things impressively indicate what the state of social feelings must have been at the time towards all who were not included within the pale of the Establishment. CHAPTER VIII. [Sidenote: COURT INTRIGUES.]