The Rydal Squire had at first believed that he could force the Friends back to the common worship in the old parish church by means of fines, for he had the frugal man's belief that the pocket can be made to act upon the conscience. With the passing of the Act of Uniformity (1662) and the later Conventicle and Five Mile Acts, however, he and his fellow magistrates had a powerful legal hold over them. It is clear that he caused the known Quakers of the parish to be watched. One, James Russell, brought him word that there had been a meeting on November 1st, 1663, at the house of John Benson, of Stang End. This was on the Lancashire side of Little Langdale beck, but the Westmorland folk who attended were Francis Benson, his son Bernard, "Regnhold" Holme, Michael Wilson, and Barbara Benson. Of Lancashire folk there were only Giles Walker, wright, who had walked from Hawkshead, and William Wilson and his wife. Wilson was the speaker, so his imprisonment had not damped his ardour. Again, next year, the constable of Grasmere, Thomas Braithwaite, and a churchwarden, Robert Grigge, gave evidence that certain Quakers had been seen returning from Giles Walker's house near Hawkshead; and among them were William Harrison, of Langdale, and Edward Hird, of Grasmere. These doings were not passed over by the Squire. He even tried conclusions with the most powerful of the sect, Francis Benson, of the Fold, and accordingly the latter was summoned, in 1663, along with his wife Dorothy, to appear at the Quarter Sessions to answer the charge of having been present at a meeting. The penalty of non-appearance was a fine of thirty shillings, while the fines of John Dixon and William Harrison, both of Langdale, charged with the same offence, were respectively twenty shillings and ten shillings. Francis Benson probably cleared his legal mis-demeanours by money payments, for no evidence has been found of his imprisonment. He and his family, however, remained staunch Friends. The place of his sepulchre is not known, though his death is recorded for February, 1673, of "Fould in Loughrig," in the Quaker Registers. There is a tradition of a burying-ground at the Fold, somewhere about his now vanished homestead, and it is quite possible that some members of the family might be buried there, as the early Friends not infrequently made a grave-plot on their own ground. The Fold was so much a centre of the sect that a marriage took place there between William Satterthwaite, of Colthouse, and the daughter of Giles Walker, of Walker Ground, Hawkshead, on December 11th, 1661.[190] According to another tradition, a Baptist Meeting-house stood at the Fold, and an old man, named Atkinson, whose forbears had owned the adjacent farmhold of the Crag--where he was then living--pointed out the exact spot on a little triangle by the road where the building had stood, and the "Dipping" took place. But this story is against all record,