Note 53 — Chapter X · (continued 2)

Morgan Watkins, who is only mentioned in this place, became a sufferer for the truth. About eight years from the above date, we find him in the Gatehouse prison, near Westminster abbey, with nineteen others on the same account, being committed by warrant from the Duke of Albemarle, “for being at a meeting in St. John’s.” This was during the time the plague visited London. In Barclay’s Letters of Early Friends, are two from Morgan Watkins, one of them dated from the Gatehouse prison, in which he says, “Blessed be His name who hath kept me, and nineteen more in this close place, all in health, above these five weeks; notwithstanding three have been buried out of this prison of the sickness.—Good is the hand of the Lord to his own, whose death is gain.”

In a letter written about three months after the above, he mentions the release of himself and Friends, and adds, “I have been weak since I came out into the air, but through the great love of my God, I am wonderfully preserved, to the praise of his name. But the two imprisonments in Newgate, and the one at the Gatehouse, have much weakened my body, in which I have had several battles with death; but the power of my God arising, gave me dominion over the distemper and weakness of the flesh. The day was dreadful to all flesh, and few were able to abide it, and stand in the judgment; but the Lord was very merciful to the remnant of his people, and his blessed seed is arising in many.”many.”