[116] This epistle begins: "All Friends everywhere keep out of plots and bustling and the arm of flesh." A little later he writes again: "Stand in the fear and dread of the Lord God; His power, life, light, seed and wisdom, by which ye may take away the occasion of wars, and so know a kingdom which hath no end, and fight for that with spiritual weapons, which takes away the occasion of the carnal; and there gather men to war, as many as ye can, and set up as many as ye can with these weapons. G. F." CHAPTER XIII. In the First Year of King Charles. 1660. I entered Bristol on the Seventh day of the week.[117] The day before, the soldiers came with their muskets into the meeting, and were exceedingly rude, beating and striking Friends with them, and drove them out of the orchard in a great rage, threatening what they would do if Friends came there again. For the mayor and the commander of the soldiers had, it seems, combined together to make a disturbance amongst Friends. [117] After leaving London, he had travelled extensively through the eastern and southern counties, revisiting Cornwall, where he had had such a long experience in Launceston jail in 1656. When Friends told me what a rage there was in the town, how they were threatened by the mayor and soldiers, and how unruly the soldiers had been the day before, I sent for several Friends, as George Bishop, Thomas Gouldney, Thomas Speed, and Edward Pyot, and desired them to go to the mayor and aldermen, and request them, seeing he and they had broken up our meetings, to let Friends have the town-hall to meet in. For the use of it Friends would give them twenty pounds a-year, to be distributed amongst the poor and when the mayor and aldermen had business to do in it, Friends would not meet in it, but only on First-days. These Friends were astonished at this, and said the mayor and aldermen would think that they were mad. I said, Nay; for this would be a considerable benefit to the poor. And it was upon me from the Lord to bid them go. At last they consented, and went, though in the cross to their own wills. When they had laid the thing before the mayor, he said, "For my part I could consent to it, but I am but one"; and he told Friends of another great hall they might have; but that they did not accept, it being inconvenient. So Friends came away, leaving the mayor in a very loving frame towards them; for they felt the Lord's power had come over him. When they came back, I spoke to them to go also to the colonel that commanded the soldiers, and lay before him the rude conduct of his soldiers, how they came armed amongst innocent people, who were waiting upon and worshipping the Lord; but they were backward to go to him.