I stayed some days with her, and then, finding her illness wear daily off, and some other Friends being come from London to visit her, I, mindful of my engagement to the Justices, and unwilling by too long an absence to give them occasion to suspect I was willing to avoid their summons, leaving those other Friends to bear her company longer, took my leave of her and them, and set my face homewards, carrying with me the welcome account of my friend’s recovery. Being returned home, I waited in daily expectation of a command from the Justices to appear again before them; but none came. I spoke with those Friends who had been with me when I was before them, and they said they had heard nothing of it from them, although they had since been in company with them. At length the assize came, but no notice was given to me that I should appear there: in fine, they never troubled themselves nor me any further about it. Thus was a cloud, that looked black and threatened a great storm, blown gently over by a providential breath, which I could not but with a thankful mind acknowledge to the All-great, All-good, All-wise Disposer, in whose hand and at whose command the hearts of all men, even the greatest, are, and who turns their counsels, disappoints their purposes, and defeats their designs and contrivances as He pleases. For if my dear friend Guli Penn had not fallen sick, if I had not thereupon been sent for to her, I had not prevented the time of my appearance, but had appeared on the day appointed; and, as I afterwards understood, that was the day appointed for the appearance of a great many persons of the Dissenting party in that side of the country, who were to be taken up and secured on account of the aforementioned plot, which had been cast upon the Presbyterians. So that if I had then appeared with and amongst them, I had in all likelihood been sent to gaol with them for company, and that under the imputation of a plotter, than which nothing was more contrary to my profession and inclination. But though I came off so easily, it fared not so well with others; for the storm increasing, many Friends in divers parts, both of city and country, suffered greatly; the sense whereof did deeply affect me, and the more for that I observed the magistrates, not thinking the laws which had been made against us severe enough, perverted the law in order to punish us. For calling our peaceable meetings riots, which in the legal notion of the word riot is a contradiction in terms, they indicted our friends as rioters for only sitting in a meeting, though nothing was there either said or done by them, and then set fines on them at pleasure. This I knew to be not only against right and justice, but even against law; and it troubled me to think that we should be made to suffer not only by laws made directly against us, but even by laws that did not at all concern us. Nor was it long before I had occasion offered more thoroughly to consider this matter.