may respect the grim determination of the severe magistrates who felt it their duty, at whatever cost, to keep that which was committed to their trust free from the poison of heresy and fanaticism, while we sorrow at the blindness which hid from their eyes the folly and the cruelty of their proceedings. We may sympathize with the tortured Quakers, whom we now know to be harmless enthusiasts, yet without approving or extenuating their mad actions, their abusive language, or their grotesque indecencies; and we may hope that, though at enmity in this life, yet, as Browning wrote of Strafford and Pym, “in that world Where great hearts led astray are turned again,” both now are able to respect each other’s loyalty of purpose and fidelity to their respective conceptions of truth. NOTES. [1] _Vide infra_, Note 6. [2] George Fox, _Journal_. It is well to notice that of the ministers mentioned by Fox by name or parish, Nath. Stevens, the rector of Fenny Drayton, was a Presbyterian of some eminence, and was ejected for non-conformity in 1662. So also was Matthew Cradock, the “priest of Coventry,” who was a distinguished non-conformist divine. The priest at Mansetter, who advised tobacco and psalm-singing, kept his living during the whole period of the Commonwealth, and so may be presumed not to have been a “Churchman” in the commonly received sense of the term. “One Macham,” of whom Fox speaks, and who seems to have treated him with more sympathetic kindness than any of the others, was a loyal Churchman and was sequestered in 1645, as a penalty for his adherence to the bishop and the king to whom he had sworn allegiance. It is rather surprising to find historians in general, even those who should be better informed, assuming that, because these men were filling the parishes of the Church of England, they were, therefore, Church of England clergymen. [3] Bishop, George, _New England Judged_, London, 1661, pp. 14–25. [4] Geo. E. Ellis, _Memorial History of Boston_, vol. i. p. 181. [5] Hubbard’s _History of New England_, p. 553. [6] _Massachusetts Records_, iv. (1), 276. [7] Bishop, 5–13. [8] Hazard, _Historical Collections_, ii. 349. _Rhode Island Records_, i. 374. [9] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 277. [10] Bishop, 38, 39. [11] Bishop, 40, 42. [12] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 308. Bishop, 50. [13] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 325. [14] Bishop, 72, 73. [15] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 345, 346. [16] _Mass. Archives_, vol. x. p. 246. [17] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 348. (In payment for this work Norton received five hundred acres of land, a good price for a sermon. _Ibid._, p. 397.)