“Not knowing whether I should be suffered or able because of weaknesses that are upon me through my hard and close imprisonment, to speak at the place of execution; I writ these few lines to signifie that I am well reconciled to the way of my God towards me, though it be in ways I looked not for, and by terrible things, yet in righteousness.” She goes on to write a long speech expressive of her religious faith and her entire lack of regret for anything that she had done in succouring the poor, “... I did but relieve an unworthy poor distressed family, and lo, I must die for it.” She puts a postscript: “Such as it is you have it from her who hath done as she could, and is sorry she can do no better.” The Quakers went through their period of martyrdom in the seventeenth century. In the midst of a heterogeneous state of religious parties, the Quaker movement stands out with great distinctness as the only religious movement in which women were recognized as leaders and teachers. The Quakers began to preach in London about the year 1654, five years after George Fox’s imprisonment. Both in England and in America, whither numbers emigrated, they endured violent persecution. The first Quakers who went to Boston were two women who sailed in 1656. They were imprisoned and maltreated, were deprived of food and light, had their books seized and burnt, and all sorts of indignities practised upon them. The reign of Charles II. was an exceedingly troublous time for Quakers in England, though they had been promised immunity from molestation in their meetings, both by General Monk and by Charles when he came to the throne. In the first year of the preaching in London two women, who undertook to distribute a pamphlet written by George Fox and called “The Kingdom of Heaven,” were arrested and sent to Bridewell prison. As their numbers increased, so did their troubles. Quakers have never been noted for active proselytizing, but their well-ordered lives made a greater impression than exhortation and argument.