“Thus continuing to live in fear and a reverential awe, they improved in true godliness; insomuch that by their pious lives they preached as well as others with words. After this manner the number of their society increased: but then grievous sufferings ensued; for the priests could not endure to see that their hearers left them; the furious mob was spurred on, and among the magistrates there were many who, being of a fierce temper, used all their strength to root out the professors of the light (as they were called at first), and to suppress and stifle their doctrine; but all proved in vain, as appears abundantly from their history; although there were hardly any prisons in England where some of these people were not shut up; besides the spoil of goods and cruel whippings that befell some of them. Yet all this they bore with a more than ordinary courage without making resistance, how great soever their number was; and notwithstanding many of them had been valiant soldiers, who often had slain their enemies in the field without regarding danger.” That the women endured an abundant share of the persecutions and martyrdoms which befell the Society is proved by the records. They were scourged and ill treated in every possible way. Not only did they endure great suffering, but took active steps in trying to rescue their fellow-members from evil plight. When George Fox was apprehended, in 1660, at the house of one Margaret Fell, a widow of Judge Fell, at Swarthmore (Lancashire), his entertainer, accompanied by another Friend, Anne Curtis, procured an interview with the king. Anne Curtis gained the royal ear through being the daughter of a Bristol sheriff who had been hanged for his devotion to the Stuarts.[53] Not much came of the interview, however, for, although the king was ready enough to listen, and gave an order for Fox to be brought up, it was evaded, and a delay of two months ensued. Barbara Blangdon, who suffered persecution and imprisonment for her preaching in the west of England in 1654, made an effort, as soon as her own release was effected, to procure that of two other members at Basingstoke, and was successful, through her intercession with the mayor. In 1656 two Quakeresses were placed in the stocks at Evesham by the mayor, with every circumstance of indignity, for visiting some prisoners. Two years before, the Oxford scholars so violently maltreated two Quakeresses who preached in the streets that one of them succumbed shortly after. With the end of the seventeenth century persecutions for the most part ceased, and a period of quiescence set in. There was a good deal of discussion going on in the eighteenth century anent Quakerism, and many satires and skits were issued against the sect, but it was a war of words only. The Quakers always maintained the equality of women with men in religious matters. It was one of the cardinal articles of their belief.