Note 64 — Chapter XIV

The sufferings of Friends in Ireland at this time were very great. The havoc and spoil they underwent were enormous, as related by the historians Sewell and Rutty, and more minutely by Besse, in his Collection of Sufferings, to which allusion has been made before, and to which the reader is now finally referred. The loss sustained by Friends from persecution in a single year (1689) was estimated at £100,000, many being deprived of all their substance. Great numbers were immured for years in prison, and many died there for Christ’s sake. Others when there was a prospect of their being released, because they could not satisfy the unjust demand of fees, as having done no wrong (thus bravely, though passively, asserting their Christian liberty,) were either detained or stripped of their clothes, and turned out.

Surrounded as they were with perils on every hand, they placed their confidence in Divine protection; and in the worst times of trial, when not in prison, they kept up their meetings for worship, as well as discipline; collected at the latter the accounts of the sufferings of their members, and took what care they could for their relief.