they give furnish some interesting particulars respecting the condition of the prison at Lancaster at the time. From the narrative of Margaret Fell it appears that, after her trial, the judge said:--"Mistress Fell, you wrote to me concerning your prisons, that they are bad and rain in, and are not fit for people to lie in; and (she says) I answered, the sheriff doth know, and hath been told of it several times; and now it is raining, if you will send to see, at this present, you may see whether they be fit for people to lie in or no. And Colonel Kirkby stood up and spoke to the judge to excuse the sheriff and the badness of the room, and I spoke to him, and said if you were to lie in it yourselves you would think it hard; but your minds is only in cruelty to commit others, as William Kirkby hath done, who hath committed ten of our friends, and put them into a cold room, where there are nothing but bare boards to lie on, where they have laid several nights, some of them old ancient men, above three score years of age, and known to be honest men in their country where they live. And when William Kirkby was asked why they might not have liberty to shift for themselves for beds, he answered and said, they were to commit them to prison, but not to provide prisons for them. And we asked him who should do it, then? and he said the King; and then the judge spoke to him, and said, they should not do so, but let them have prisons fit for men." George Fox also made complaint. He says:--"I desired the judge to send some to see my prison, being so bad, they would put no creature they had in it, it was so windy and rainy; and so I was had away to my prison, and some justices, with Colonel Kirkby, went up to see it; and when they came up in it, they durst scarcely go in it, it was so bad, rainy, and windy, and the badness of the floor, and others that came up said it was ... I being removed out of the prison I was in formerly; and so Colonel Kirkby told me I should be removed from that place ere long." While lying in this deplorable state in the gaol at Lancaster, he says he was so starved with cold and rain that his body became greatly swelled, and his limbs much benumbed. Well might Macaulay say of those times, "The prisons were hells on earth, seminaries of every crime and of every disease. At the assizes the lean and yellow culprits brought with them from their cells to the dock an atmosphere of stench and pestilence which sometimes avenged them signally on bench, bar, and jury." [Illustration: Handwritten note] [Illustration: GATEWAY, LANCASTER CASTLE.]