Now we are fully persuaded in our own minds by the Spirit of God that we do not meet out of contempt to Authority but in obedience to Divine commands: we must not forbear our Meeting because they say they fear we will plot. God in his due time will fully clear us; but in the mean time we must do our duty as the Lord requires us ... and so long as we stand obedient to the will of our God it shall be well with us whatever comes, loss of life or any thing else, our Life in God they cannot touch.... Written in Leicester-Prison the sixth day of the fourth month, 1667. It seems probable that Patrick Livingstone visited Elizabeth Hooton at her home at Skegby; his future wife, Sarah Hyfeild, of Nottingham, appears as one of the Friends named for “publicke service” in the Minute Book of the Women’s Quarterly Meeting for Nottinghamshire, which Meeting was “setled” in 1671. The marriage took place in 1676, and the occasion elicited from the Friends of Aberdeen Monthly Meeting a fully-signed liberating certificate, which remains a noble tribute to the bridegroom’s Christian character, and a token of the high esteem and love of his north country friends; Robert Barclay and David Barclay are amongst the signatories.[104] * * * * * Accustomed as we are to the easy tolerance of the present day, the echoes of the fierce controversies waged between opposing religious sects during the seventeenth century sound strangely in our ears; Elizabeth Hooton, as one would naturally expect, was not behind in engaging in this wordy war. In 1667 we find her writing:[105] You bawling Women from yᵉ Ranters ... you have said Wee have made an Jdoll of George Fox.... You have hunted for Richard Farneworth & others formerly.... Therefore misery will come upon you. About 1668, Elizabeth Hooton came into violent conflict with the sect of the Muggletonians. She appears to have written a letter against Lodowicke Muggleton,[106] to which he refers in a letter he sent to her in January, 1668, commencing as follows:[107] I saw a letter of yours sent to James Brocke; it is supposed that you are the mother, or some relation to that Samuel Hooton of Nottingham, who was damned to eternity by me in the year 1662. It is no great marvel unto me that he proved such a desperate devil, seeing his mother was such an old she-serpent that brought him forth into this world.... She hath shot forth her poisonous arrows at me in blasphemy, curses, and words, thinking herself stronger than her brethren.... Therefore, in obedience to my commission ... I do pronounce Elizabeth Hooton, Quaker, ... cursed and damned, both in soul and body, from the presence of God, elect men and angels, to eternity. It is only fair to state that if the quotations from the letter written by her to Brocke are correct, her denunciations were equally emphatic.