From LANCASTER I returned to Robert Widders’s, and from thence I went to Thomas Leper’s to a meeting in the evening; and a very blessed meeting we had there: after which I walked in the evening to Robert Widders’s again. No sooner was I gone, than there came a company of disguised men to Thomas Leper’s, with swords and pistols; who, suddenly entering the house, put out the candles, and swung their swords about amongst the people of the house, who held up the chairs before them to save themselves from being cut and wounded. At length they drove all the people out of the house, and then searched it for me; who, it seems, was the only person they looked for: for they had laid wait before on the highway, by which I should have gone had I rode to Robert Widders’s. And not meeting with me on the way, they thought to find me in the house, but the Lord prevented them. Soon after I was come to Robert Widders’s, some Friends came from the town where Thomas Leper lived, and gave us a relation of this wicked attempt: and they were afraid lest they should come and search Robert Widders’s house also for me, and do me a mischief; but the Lord restrained them that they came not. Though these men were in disguise, the Friends perceived some of them to be Frenchmen, and supposed them to be servants belonging to one called Sir Robert Bindlas; for some of them had said, that in their nation they used to tie the Protestants to trees, and whip and destroy them. His servants used often to abuse Friends, both in their meetings, and going to and from them. They once took Richard Hubberthorn and several others out of one, and carried them a good way off into the fields; and there bound them, and left them bound in the Winter season. At another time, one of his servants came to Francis Fleming’s house, and thrust his naked rapier in at the door and windows; but there being at the house a kinsman of Francis Fleming’s, one who was not a Friend, he came with a cudgel in his hand, and bid the serving-man put up his rapier; which, when the other would not, but vapoured at him with it, and was rude, he knocked him down with his cudgel, and took his rapier from him; and had it not been for Friends, he would have run him through with it. So the Friends preserved the life of him that would have destroyed theirs.