This, with some fragments of the old wall, and a small, strongly-built structure, supposed to have been a dungeon and known as Cobb’s Hall, is all that remains of the old Castle. The area of the fortress is now occupied by the County Hall and a building now disused, which was the County Gaol. Key to Abbreviations =D.= = The Friends’ Reference Library, at Devonshire House, 136, Bishopsgate, London, E.C. A.R.B. MSS. = A collection of two hundred and fifty Letters of early Friends, 1654 to 1688, so named because worked over by Abram Rawlinson Barclay in 1841. In =D.= Camb. _Jnl._ = _The Journal of George Fox_, Cambridge ed., 1911. _D.N.B._ = _Dictionary of National Biography_, 68 vols., 1885-1904. _F.P.T._ = “_The First Publishers of Truth_,” being early Records (now first printed) of the Introduction of Quakerism into the Counties of England and Wales. Edited for the Friends Historical Society by Norman Penney, with Introduction by Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L., D.Litt., 1907. _Jnl. F.H.S._ = The quarterly Journal of the Friends Historical Society, commencing 1903. Spence MSS. = A collection of seventeenth century MSS. belonging to Robert Spence, of London. 3 vols. Deposited in =D.= Swarth. MSS. = A Collection of about fourteen hundred letters, papers, etc. of the seventeenth century. In =D.= CHAPTER I Early Service in England Travelling on through some parts of Leicestershire and into Nottinghamshire, I met with a tender people, and a very tender woman whose name was Elizabeth Hooton. _Journal of George Fox._ Such is our introduction to the earliest convert of George Fox: one who was destined to travel far in the service of Truth and whose steadfastness, determination, fearlessness and patience are unconsciously revealed in the numerous letters which she wrote. No insignificant place was hers in the long and bitter struggle for religious liberty, and her life’s story has left an indelible mark on the history of the beginnings of the Society of Friends. Little is known of her early life. Crœse says:[1] In this same Fiftieth Year, Elizabeth Hooton, born and living in Nottingham, a Woman pretty far advanced in Years, was the first of her Sex among the Quakers who attempted to imitate Men and Preach, which she now (in this year) commenced. After her Example, many of her Sex had the confidence to undertake the same Office. This woman afterwards went with George Fox into New-England, where she wholly devoted her self to this Work; and after having suffered many Affronts from that People, went into Jamaica, and there finished her Life.