THE SIXTH BOOK. 1661-1664. (continued 4)

In the island of Barbadoes those called Quakers suffered also much by the people, instigated not a little by the priests, Samuel Graves, Mathew Gray, Thomas Manwaring, and Francis Smith; for these being often drunk, gave occasion thereby to be reproved: and one Thomas Clark coming once into the place of public worship, and exhorting the auditors to desist from lewdness, and to fear God, was so grievously beaten with sticks, that he fell down in a swoon; and Graves who had preached then, went to the house of the said Clark, pulled his wife out of doors, and tore her clothes from her back. And Manwaring, who had threatened Clark that he would procure a law to be made, by which his ears should be cut off, once wrote in a letter to him, ‘I am sorry that your zeal surpasseth your moderation, and that a club must beat out of you what the devil hath inspired.’ And this was because Clark had told him that his conversation was not becoming a minister of the Gospel. Other rough treatment Clark met with I pass by, though once he was set in the stocks and imprisoned. But now I leave America, and return to England.