The first rapid spreading in the North of England was materially helped by the establishment, in 1652, of a centre at Swarthmoor Hall, near Ulverston in Lancashire, the property of Judge Fell and his wife Margaret, good churchpeople, much given to religious exercises, and holding open house for travelling ministers of all denominations. The capture of this stronghold gave the movement a northern headquarters, and a post-office. Margaret Fell, converted by Fox at the age of thirty-eight, built the rest of her life into the movement; seventeen years later--more than ten years after the death of her husband--she became Fox's wife. Her voluminous and carefully preserved correspondence with the leading missionaries of the group alone forms almost a journal of the early years of the Society.[8] [Footnote 7: Toleration Act passed 1689. Fox died two years later.] The whole of the countryside at Swarthmoor, whose minister Fox had repudiated, finding him filled with a ranting spirit, high words and "notions"--"full of filth," as he tersely notes in his Journal--came out against him. He was given up to justice, ordered to be whipped, and then handed over to the mercy of the mob, who beat him until he fell senseless. Presently, rising up, he bade them strike again. A mason numbed his arm with a blow from a staff; the arm recovered instantly under the power of his outgoing love for his persecutors. Incidents of this kind--of beatings, stonings, and assaults of a more disgusting nature--are typical of the treatment received with unvarying sweetness by the Quaker missionaries, both in England and in America. On several occasions Fox's life was attempted. [Footnote 8: The bulk of the "Fell" correspondence is preserved at the headquarters of the Society of Friends, Devonshire House, Bishopsgate, E.C.]