Swarthmoor Hall, the home of the Fells, was then known far and wide for the hospitality of its owner, and to none was a heartier welcome accorded than to the professors and teachers of religion. The evening following his first harangue in the church at Ulverston Fox was a guest within its walls; at the request of his hostess he preached to the family and servants, and with such effect that the whole household became converted to his principles. Two or three weeks afterwards Mrs. Fell's husband returned to his Lancashire home. As he crossed the trackless waste of the Leven Sands, the only way at that time from Lancaster into Furness, a company of his friends and neighbours went out to meet him and apprise him of the events that had occurred at Swarthmoor in his absence. "A deal of the captains," writes Margaret Fell, "and great ones of the county went to meet my then husband as he was coming home, and informed him that a great disaster was befallen among his family, and that they were witched, and that they had taken us out of our religion; and that he might either set them away, or all the country would be undone." The judge, as may be supposed, was greatly concerned at the intelligence and much incensed against the man who had "bewitched" his family and wrought such trouble in his house. Mrs. Fell told her husband the true state of things, and at night Fox, who was still in the neighbourhood, was sent for. On his arrival he answered all his interrogator's objections in so satisfactory a manner that the judge "assented to the truth and reasonableness thereof;" he set forth in detail the points of his new doctrine, and inveighed against the conduct of the clergy. Margaret Fell thus records the result of the interview:--"And so my husband came to see clearly the truth of what he spoke, and was very quiet, that night, said no more, and went to bed. The next morning came Lampitt priest of Ulverston, and got my husband into the garden and spoke much to him there; but my husband had seen so much the night before that the priest got little entrance upon him." The judge must have been greatly impressed with the arguments of his guest, for from that time he offered no further objection to the Quakerism of his household; though he himself remained a Churchman to the end of his days he was a steady friend to the members of the new sect and its founder on all occasions when it was in his power, and in token of his sympathy gave them permission to hold their meetings in his house, there being no other place in the neighbourhood where they could assemble. "He let us have," said his wife, "a meeting in his house the next first day after, which was the first public meeting that was at Swarthmoor; our meetings being kept at Swarthmoor about thirty-eight years, until a new meeting-house was built by George Fox's order and cost, near Swarthmoor Hall." [Illustration: handwritten as follows; Thy dutyfull wife till death Margaret Fell '8 Feb: 1652]