From Swarthmoor Fox travelled further north, visiting Cumberland, Durham, and Northumberland, where he frequently came in contact with the Baptists, a sect that had anticipated many of the doctrines and much of the system of discipline adopted by the Friends, and many of whom became followers of Fox. In the border city he preached in the Castle, at the Market Cross, and then went into the "steeple-house," where a tumult arose. "The magistrates' wives," he says, "were in a rage, and strove mightily to be at me;" then "the rude people of the city rose and came with staves and stones into the steeple-house, crying 'Down with these round-headed rogues.'" For interrupting the services in the church he was committed to gaol and subjected to many hardships; Wilfrid Lawson, a predecessor, but not an ancestor of the present baronet of that name, who was then high sheriff, "stirred them up to take away his life," and his peace was disturbed at night by "a company of bitter Scotch priests, Presbyterians made up of envy and malice" and "foul-mouthed." He lay in the prison at Carlisle for several months. On regaining his liberty he passed into Westmoreland, and thence to his constant friends, the Fells, of Swarthmoor. Fox had now fought and won the decisive battles of his life; Quakerism had become an established fact, and had taken a firm hold on the minds of many of the people in the north, and not a few of the converts had begun to preach the new doctrines in other parts of the country. Having, as he considered, concluded his great pioneering work, he took his departure from the hospitable mansion at Swarthmoor in the spring of 1654, and travelled through the midland and southern districts of England. While in his native county, preaching, disputing, and holding conferences, he was taken prisoner by a company of the Parliamentary troopers, and sent by Colonel Hacker to Cromwell under the charge of Captain Drury. When in the presence of the Protector, at Whitehall, he exhorted him to keep in the fear of God; and Cromwell, having patiently listened to his lecture, parted with him, saying, "Come again to my house, for if thou and I were but an hour a day together, we should be nearer one to the other. I wish no more harm to thee than I do to my own soul." Fox found a friend in Cromwell, and on another occasion, when he and some of his friends had been dispersing "base books against the Lord Protector," as Major-General Goffe informed Thurloe, Cromwell sent the Quaker away, on receiving from him a written promise that he would do nothing against his government.