Next day an officer came with sword and pistols to take me. I told him, “I knew his errand before, and had given up myself to be taken; for if I would have escaped their imprisonment, I could have gone forty miles off before he came; but I was an innocent man, and so cared not what they could do to me.” He asked me “How I heard of it, seeing the order was made privately in a parlour.” I said it was no matter, it was sufficient that I heard of it. I asked him to let me see his order; whereupon he laid his hand on his sword, and said, “I must go with him before the lieutenants, to answer such questions as they should propose to me.” I told him it was but civil and reasonable for him to let me see his order; but he would not. Then said I, I am ready. So I went along with them, and Margaret Fell accompanied us to HOLKER-HALL. When we came thither, there was one Rawlinson, a justice, and one called Sir George Middleton, and many more that I did not know, besides old Justice Preston who lived there. They brought Thomas Atkinson, a Friend of Cartmel, as a witness against me, for some words which he had told to one Knipe, who had informed them; which words were, “that I had written against the plotters, and had knocked them down.” These words they could not make much of, for I told them I had heard of a plot, and had written against it. Old Preston asked me, whether I had a hand in that script? I asked him what he meant? He said, in the Battledore. I answered, Yes. Then he asked me, whether I understood languages. I said, sufficient for myself; and that I knew no law that was transgressed by it. I told them also, that “to understand outward languages, was no matter of salvation; for the many tongues began but at the confusion of Babel; and if I did understand anything of them, I judged and knocked them down again for any matter of salvation that was in them.” Thereupon he turned away, and said, “George Fox knocks down all the languages. Come,” said he, “we will examine you of higher matters.”