They had come down in June, and in August were so far settled as to undertake expansion east and west. The east, a stronghold of Puritanism, was less receptive than the western country, where Seekers abounded and convincements took place by hundreds. Ireland was broken into by William Edmondson, an ex-Cromwellian soldier. The country was in process of being "settled" by English colonists, who, most of them being either Baptists or Independents, were already a sufficient source of irritation, and the progress of the new message was slow, and met with a persecution, borrowing much of its bitterness from the state of nervous fear prevailing amongst the civil and military authorities. For a time there was an attempt systematically to exclude Friends from the country, but it gave way before the zeal and simplicity of the preachers, and Quakerism, gaining most of its early converts from the army, became in the end a rapidly expanding force. In Scotland Quaker teaching progressed slowly. By 1656 the Continent had been attacked, Holland and Germany, Austria and Hungary, Adrianople, where a young girl who had gone out alone reasoned with the Sultan, and was told that she spoke truth, and asked to remain in the country; Rome--where John Love was given up by the Jesuits to the Inquisition, examined by the Pope, and hanged--the Morea, and Smyrna, and Alexandria were visited. Many attempts were made to land at the Levantine ports, most of which were, however, frustrated by English consuls and merchants; George Robinson reached Jerusalem, and came near to meeting his death at the hands of the Turks; and the first isolated attempt had been made in the West Indies and America. These activities and expansions were helped forward and confirmed by Fox during the intervals between his many imprisonments. He spent altogether some six years in prison. For the rest, his life was one long missionary enterprise, and during his detentions he worked unceasingly.