this burden came upon him, he had prayed God that he might have been excused of this message, thinking that a more unworthy one than himself could not have been singled out; but whatever he did, he could not be rid of it; and though he spent a whole week with fasting, tears, and supplication, yet during the time of that abstinence, he felt a daily supply and refreshment to his spirits, so that he fully resigned to do what he believed was required of him from the Lord; and he felt all fears of the frowns of men removed from him. Some other speeches which he intended to have made to the parliament, but was obstructed therein, he also published afterwards in print. In the latter part of this year it happened that Humphrey Smith coming to Evesham in Worcestershire, was disturbed in a meeting by the mayor, Edward Young, who said he would break the Quakers’ meetings, or else his bones should lie in the dirt. Thus resolved, he came in the month called October, on a First-day of the week in the morning, into their meeting, in a house where H. Smith was: and several persons after being rudely abused, were hauled out to prison. In the afternoon a meeting being kept in the street, some of the company were by order of the said mayor put into the stocks, and others, of which the aforesaid Smith was one, into a dark dungeon: and though the mayor then said it was an unlawful assembly, but if they would meet in houses he would not molest them; yet on next First-day of the week, he seeing one going to a meeting that was appointed in a house, put him in prison. H. Smith and his friends had some bedding and bed-clothes sent them, but the mayor caused it to be taken away from them; and afterwards when some straw was brought them to lie upon, the jailer would not suffer it; nay, when one came, and asked liberty to fetch out their dung from them, the mayor denied it, and ordered him to be put in the stocks. The place where they were kept, was not twelve feet square, and the hole to take in air, was but four inches wide, so that even by day-light they were fain to burn candle, when they had it. Here they were kept above fourteen weeks, with their own dung in the same room; so that one of them grew sick of the stink; and yet the jailer said, if they had been there for theft or murder, he could have let them have more liberty than now he durst, because of the mayor. James Wall, one of the prisoners, was a freeman of the town, and a shopkeeper, and yet the mayor forbade his wife to stand in the market-place, which for many years she had done. She going to him about it, he began to fawn upon her, and said: ‘I hear that your husband doth abuse you.’ To which she answered, ‘My husband did never abuse me; but as for that judgment which he now holdeth, once I could not own it; but now seeing it is so much persecuted, makes me own it, because the way of God was always persecuted.’ He hearing her speak so, said, she should not have a standing place for five pounds.