This is amply confirmed by the fragments of her history which remain to us, and from these fragments she emerges a heroic figure, one who worthily played her part in the heroic age of the Society of Friends: always valiant for the truth, quick to seize any opportunity that offered to plead the cause of her fellow sufferers, even though her own sufferings made the occasion—fearless in denouncing the evils of the time—far in advance of the age in which she lived in her advocacy of prison and other reforms, and, though her methods may appear strangely uncouth in our politer days, yet her history is eloquent in its lessons for us, conscious, it may be, that, in the words of Whittier, The spirit’s temper grows too soft in this still air.[147] Does not the injunction of an earlier writer[148] need special emphasis to-day? “May we not now, in a time of ease and liberty, live carelessly and indifferently towards Him, but in deep reverence and fear worship him, our great Deliverer, who powerfully wrought in the King’s heart to the setting at freedom and liberty these sons and children of the morning!” Another age, other problems, and as we consider those which confront us to-day, we ask, with Florence Nightingale, “Was there ever an age in so much need of heroism?” and we recognise too that to solve those problems aright we must approach them in the spirit in which Elizabeth Hooton approached the problems of her time, that spirit which prompted her to say: All this and much more I have gone thorugh and suffered, and much more could I for the Seed’s sake which is Buried and Oppressed, and as a Cart is laden with Sheaves and as a Prisoner in an inward Prison-House; Yea, the Love that I bear to the Souls of all Men, making me willing to undergo whatsoever can be inflicted.[149] [Illustration: FROM THE EARLIEST MINUTE BOOK OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE Q.M. _See p. vii._] Addenda THE HUSBAND OF ELIZABETH HOOTON (pp. 2, 16) Several writers on Elizabeth Hooton have stated that her husband was _Samuel_: James Bowden, _Hist._ i. 260; A. C. Bickley in _D.N.B._; Charlotte Fell Smith in _The British Friend_, 1893. Mrs. Manners has come to the conclusion that Elizabeth’s husband was _Oliver_. She thus states her case: 1. Though an exhaustive search of the Nottinghamshire Parish Registers has been made, I failed to find any marriage of a _Samuel_ Hooton to Elizabeth ⸺ in any years when it would possibly have occurred. 2. At Ollerton (which village is said by Thoroton to have been partly owned by Hootons) I found that in the year 1628 _Oliver_ Hooton married Elizabeth Carrier—and on the 4th of May, 1633, Samuel, son of Oliver and Elizabeth Hooton, was baptized. (Ollerton Parish Registers.) 3. No entries in Ollerton Registers between the years 1633 and 1636. 4. At Skegby in the year 1636 a son was born to _Oliver_ and Elizabeth Hooton, and in succeeding years the children born are described as above.