The Quakers of the seventeenth century, it is pretty well known, were not the mild and gentle beings who compose the ranks of the Friends in the nineteenth. They could rail and brawl in public, would persist in following their trades on a Sunday, and their resistance to the "powers that be" was of a much more active character than that which induces a modern Friend to allow a rate-collector to seize on his tables and chairs. The Quakers met with severer treatment during the Commonwealth than any other sect of Christians. We trace them obscurely under the denomination of "Seekers," their distinguishing principle being the doctrine of an inward light. George Fox, their founder, having bade some of the justices who committed him to jail to _tremble_ at the word of the Lord, gave rise to the term "Quakers." In this city and county they were apparently pursued with great severity after the restoration of "Church and King," which undoubtedly had the usual effect of considerably sharpening their asperity towards the established faith. In the city, they were prevented entering their meeting-house (in Friar Street), and accordingly preached in the open air, while soldiers were paid for watching them. George Fox himself was confined in Worcester jail. In an ancient library at Kingsnorton School, there are treatises against the then recently propounded notions of the Quakers. The subjoined extract will show that maypoles and long hair were not the only troubles the poor vicar of that parish had to contend against. It is taken from "Besse's Sufferings of the Quakers," vol. ii, chap. iii, p. 60, under date 1657. "Jane Hicks, of Chadwitch, was sent to prison at Worcester for some offence which the priest of King's Norton took at her speaking to him." The same writer also states that at another time she was sent to Worcester for disturbing at Bromsgrove church, and that she was placed four times in the stocks--once for a whole night and part of two days. The woman would thus seem to have been a notorious disturber; and doubtless her "speaking" to the "priest" was in the church at the time of worship--a very common custom with the Friends of that day. Viewed in this light the vicar's conduct was proper, and was a necessary precaution against unseemly interruptions. The books of the above-named library, thus viewed, become interesting to us. They are evidence in the great Quaker battle, and no doubt poor Jane Hicks was stirred up with wrath by hearing some of the arguments out of this storehouse hurled at her then noisy sect. When John Bissell, also in 1657, refused to pay the "priest" ten shillings tithe, and had "goods taken from him worth £1. 5s.," no doubt these identical volumes were at hand ready to pour forth their artillery against the poor Quaker.[3] In the County Rolls for 1662 is "A calendar of the prisoners called Quakers: Rd. Payton, convicted _de premunire_; Edwd. Hall, convicted for words spoken in