Note 6 — CHAPTER 1.

We cannot be surprised at the hard language sometimes used by the early Friends in protesting against the unchristian conduct of their persecutors. The rapacity of their enemies in the early periods of the Society carried their plunder to so great an excess, as not only to involve many in total ruin, but subjected them to long and cruel imprisonments, which, in many cases of particular hardship, terminated in death. It has already been stated that at one time there were 4,500 Quakers in prison in England and Wales at one time. In 1662, twenty died in different prisons in London, and seven more after their liberation, from ill treatment. In 1664, twenty-five died, and in 1665, fifty-two more. The number which perished in this way, throughout the whole kingdom, amounted to 369. But for fuller particulars of the cruelties practised against the early Quakers, the reader is referred to the two closely printed folio volumes, entitled Besse’s Sufferings.