At an early date Friends acquired a Burial Ground at Skegby where members of the Society from the district were interred. The entries in the Register show that many Mansfield Friends were buried there, for until Elizabeth Heath gave a piece of ground as a burial place in 1693, Friends of Mansfield had no place of sepulture there. Quite recently, in the course of repairs to the house at Skegby, which up to 1800 was the property of Friends and was known as the Meeting House, and by some was believed to be the house in which Elizabeth Hooton lived, a stone used as a shelf in the pantry was found on which there were remains of an inscription and the date 1687. An old lady of Skegby, aged ninety-eight, states that she fancies she can remember seeing some tombstones in the garden which covers the site of the old graveyard. No record of Elizabeth Hooton’s ministry, or allusion to her, has been found in contemporary documents for the years 1658-1659, but in the early part of the year 1660 she was in Nottinghamshire, and Besse gives the following graphic description of an apparently unprovoked assault on her by Priest Jackson of Selston: “On the 2d of the Month called April, Elizabeth Hooton, passing quietly on the Road, was met by one Jackson, Priest of Selston, who abused her, beat her with many Blows, knockt her down, and afterward put her into the Water.”[36] With this incident, the record of her early service in England ends. We next follow her in her perilous journeyings in a distant land. [Illustration: Falſe Prophets and falſe Teachers deſcribed. 1652. (see page 11.)] CHAPTER II First Visit to New England “Why touch upon such themes?” perhaps some friend May ask, incredulous; “and to what good end? Why drag again into the light of day The errors of an age long passed away?” I answer: “For the lesson that they teach; The tolerance of opinion and of speech. Hope, Faith, and Charity remain—these three; And greatest of them all is Charity.” LONGFELLOW, _New England Tragedies_, Prologue to “Endicott.” We owe to their heroic devotion the most priceless of our treasures, our perfect liberty of thought and speech; and all who love our country’s freedom may well reverence the memory of those martyred Quakers, by whose death and agony the battle in New England has been won. BROOKE ADAMS, _Emancipation of Massachusetts_.