“Yes.” I told him, “this act took hold only of such, as met to plot and contrive insurrections, as late experience had shown; but they had never experienced that by us. Because thieves are sometimes on the road, must not honest men travel? And because plotters and contrivers have met to do mischief, must not an honest, peaceable people meet to do good? If we had been a people that met to plot and contrive insurrections, &c., we might have drawn ourselves into fours; for four might do more mischief in plotting than if there were four hundred, because four might speak out their minds more freely one to another than four hundred could. Therefore, we being innocent, and not the people this act concerns, we keep our meetings as we used to do: and, I said, I believed that he knew in his conscience we were innocent.” After some more discourse, he took our names and the places where we lodged, and at length, as the informer was gone, set us at liberty. Being set at liberty, the Friends with me asked me “whither I would go?” I told them, “to Gracechurch Street meeting again, if it were not over.” When we came there, the people were generally gone; only some few stood at the gate. We went into Gerrard Roberts’s house; and from thence I sent out to know how the other meetings in the city were. I understood that at some of the meeting-places Friends were kept out; at others they were taken, but set at liberty again a few days after. A glorious time it was, for the Lord’s power came over all, and his everlasting truth got renown. For as fast as some that were speaking were taken down, others were moved of the Lord to stand up and speak, to the admiration of the people; and the more, because many Baptists and other sectaries left their public meetings, and came to see how the Quakers would stand. As for the informer aforesaid, he was so frightened, that there durst hardly any informer appear publicly again in London for some time after. But the mayor, whose name was Samuel Starling, though he carried himself smoothly towards us, proved afterwards a very great persecutor of our Friends, many of whom he cast into prison, as may be seen in the trials of W. Penn, W. Mead, and others, at the Old Bailey this year.[21]