We came one night to an Indian town, and lay at the house of the
king, who was a very pretty[AT] man. Both he and his wife received
us very lovingly, and his attendants (such as they were) were very
respectful to us. They gave us mats to lie on; but provision was very
short with them, they having caught but little that day. At another
Indian town where we stayed the king came to us, and he could speak
some English. I spoke to him much, and also to his people; and they
were very loving to us.
[AT] That is, kindly-spirited.
At length we came to Middletown, an English plantation in East
Jersey, and there we found some Friends; but we could not stay to
have a meeting at that time, being earnestly pressed in our spirits
to get to the half-year's meeting of Friends at Oyster Bay, in Long
Island, which was very near at hand.
We went with a Friend, Richard Hartshorn, brother of Hugh Hartshorn,
the upholsterer, in London, who received us gladly at his house,
where we refreshed ourselves; and then he carried us and our horses
in his own boat over a great water, which occupied most part of the
day getting over, and set us upon Long Island. We got that evening to
Friends at Gravesend, with whom we tarried that night, and next day
got to Flushing, and the day following reached Oyster Bay; several
Friends of Gravesend and Flushing accompanied us.
The half-year's meeting began next day, which was the first day of
the week, and lasted four days. The first and second days we had
public meetings for worship, to which people of all sorts came;
on the third day were the men's and women's meetings, wherein the
affairs of the Church were taken care of. Here we met with some bad
spirits, who had run out from Truth into prejudice, contention, and
opposition to the order of Truth, and to Friends therein.
These had been very troublesome to Friends in their meetings there
and thereabouts formerly, and likely would have been so now; but I
would not suffer the service of our men's and women's meetings to
be interrupted and hindered by their cavils. I let them know that if
they had anything to object against the order of Truth which we were
in, we would give them a meeting another day on purpose. And indeed I
laboured the more, and travelled the harder to get to this meeting,
where it was expected many of these contentious people would be;
because I understood they had reflected much upon me, when. I was far
from them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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