So I was taken to the jail again, and kept prisoner till the next
assizes.
Some time before this assize Margaret Fell was sent prisoner to
Lancaster jail by Fleming, Kirby, and Preston, justices; and at
the assize the oath was tendered to her also, and she was again
committed to prison.
In the Sixth month,[140] the assizes were again held at Lancaster,
and the same judges, Twisden and Turner, again came that circuit. But
Judge Turner then sat on the crown bench, and so I was brought before
him. Before I was called to the bar I was put among the murderers and
felons for about two hours, the people, the justices and also the
Judge gazing upon me.
[140] This would be August of our calendar. Again the pen was
busy during these weeks in jail, and many epistles and documents
were written. A Baptist preacher, named Wiggan, who had been a
great opponent of Fox, was brought into straits over the oath
which he finally took. The episode furnishes this interesting
entry:
"This Wiggan was poor, and while he was prisoner at Lancaster
he sent into the country, and got money gathered for relief of
the poor people of God in prison; and many people gave freely,
thinking it had been for us, when indeed it was for himself. But
when we heard of it, we laid it upon him, and wrote into the
country, that Friends might let the people know the truth of the
matter, that it was not our manner to have collections made for
us, and that those collections were only for Wiggan and another,
a drunken preacher of his society, who was so drunk, that once
he lost his breeches."
After they had tried several others, they called me to the bar, and
empanelled a jury. Then the Judge asked the justices whether they
had tendered me the oath at the sessions. They said that they had.
Then he said, "Give them the book, that they may swear they tendered
him the oath at the sessions." They said they had. Then he said,
"Give them the book, that they may swear they tendered him the oath
according to the indictment."
Some of the justices refused to be sworn; but the Judge said he would
have it done, to take away all occasion of exception. When the jury
were sworn, and the justices had sworn that they had tendered me
the oath according to the indictment, the Judge asked me whether I
had not refused the oath at the last assizes. I said, "I never took
an oath in my life, and Christ, the Saviour and Judge of the world,
said, 'Swear not at all.'"
The Judge seemed not to take notice of my answer, but asked me
whether or not I had refused to take the oath at the last assizes.
I said, "The words that I then spoke to them were, that if they
could prove, either judge, justices, priest, or teacher, that after
Christ and the Apostle had forbidden swearing, they commanded that
Christians should swear, I would swear."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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