About this time my father, resolving to sell his estate, and having reserved for his own use such parts of his household goods as he thought fit, not willing to take upon himself the trouble of selling the rest, gave them unto me; whereupon I went down to Crowell, and having before given notice there and thereabouts that I intended a public sale of them, I sold them, and thereby put some money into my pocket. Yet I sold such things only as I judged useful, leaving the pictures and armour, of which there was some store there, unsold. Not long after this my father sent for me to come to him at London about some business, which, when I came there, I understood was to join with him in the sale of his estate, which the purchaser required for his own satisfaction and safety, I being then the next heir to it in law. And although I might probably have made some advantageous terms for myself by standing off, yet when I was satisfied by counsel that there was no entail upon it or right of reversion to me, but that he might lawfully dispose of it as he pleased, I readily joined with him in the sale without asking or having the least gratuity or compensation, no, not so much as the fee I had given to counsel to secure me from any danger in doing it. There having been some time before this a very severe law made against the Quakers by name, and more particularly prohibiting our meetings under the sharpest penalties of five pounds for the first offence so called, ten pounds for the second, and banishment for the third, under pain of felony for escaping or returning without license—which law was looked upon to have been procured by the bishops in order to bring us to a conformity to their way of worship—I wrote a few lines in way of dialogue between a Bishop and a Quaker, which I called CONFORMITY, PRESSED AND REPRESSED. B. What! You are one of them that do deny To yield obedience by conformity. Q. Nay: we desire conformable to be. B. But unto what? Q. The Image of the Son. {190} B. What’s that to us! We’ll have conformity Unto our form. Q. Then we shall ne’er have done. For, if your fickle minds should alter, we Should be to seek a new conformity. Thus, who to-day conform to Prelacy, To-morrow may conform to Popery. But take this for an answer, Bishop, we Cannot conform either to them or thee; For while to truth your forms are opposite, Whoe’er conforms thereto doth not aright. B. We’ll make such knaves as you conform, or lie Confined in prisons till ye rot and die. Q. Well, gentle Bishop, I may live to see, For all thy threats, a check to cruelty; But in the meantime, I, for my defence, Betake me to my fortress, Patience.