The journal of George Fox, vol. 2 of 2 : $b Being an historical account of his life, travels, sufferings, and Christian experiences.Fox, George
Religion
The journal of George Fox, vol. 2 of 2 : $b Being an historical account of his life, travels, sufferings, and Christian experiences.
Fox, George
Fox, George, 1624-1691
This George Wilson, at whose house George Fox was entertained, is
not mentioned elsewhere in the Journal. He was originally from
Great Britain, and a great sufferer for the truth during the New
England persecution. In 1661, it appears he was amongst
twenty-seven other Friends in prison in Boston, who were liberated
that year by an order from the home government. But these faithful
messengers of the Lord, who were thus unexpectedly released from
bondage, were concerned, almost immediately on leaving the jail,
to preach to the inhabitants those truths for which they had
suffered. The magistrates, already at their wits’-end, in
fruitlessly endeavouring to arrest the spread of Quaker
principles, being impatient at this fresh manifestation of
devotedness, ordered a guard of soldiers to drive all the Friends
out of their territory into the wilderness; an order which was
speedily executed. George Wilson was among those who were thus
forcibly expelled; but, undismayed by the new law for the
application of the whip, they returned at once to their homes.
There they were quickly apprehended, and sentenced to undergo a
flogging through three towns, and to be put out of the limits of
the colony. The executioner, desirous of lending his ingenuity to
increase the severity of the sentence, provided himself with a
singularly constructed whip, or as it is called, a “cruel
instrument,” with which he “miserably tore” the bodies of the
sufferers. Such was the new and barbarous character of the weapon
used on this occasion, that Friends endeavoured, though
unsuccessfully, to obtain it to send to England, as another proof
of the malignant cruelty which actuated the rulers of
Massachusetts towards the new Society. At the conclusion of this
whipping at Boston, George Wilson, in the midst of his
persecutors, knelt in solemn supplication to the Most High.
Being on a gospel mission in Virginia, George Wilson became a
victim to the reigning intolerance, and was incarcerated in the
dungeon at James’ Town. The circumstances of his case evinced
great barbarity on the part of his persecutors. The place of his
imprisonment was an extremely loathsome one, without light or
ventilation. Here, after being cruelly scourged and heavily ironed
for a long period, he had to feel the heartlessness of a
persecuting and dominant hierarchy; until, at last, his flesh
actually rotted from his bones, and, within the cold damp walls of
the miserable dungeon of James’ Town, he laid down his life a
faithful martyr for the testimony of Jesus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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