few adherents also among the gentry of this county. The most notable of these was Isaac Penington of Chalfont St. Peter, whose house was visited by Fox himself in 1658[1]; it was through acquaintance with this family that Thomas Ellwood came within range of Quaker influence, attracted by the strange sweetness and stillness of their home life, from which nevertheless ' all mirth and pleasant discourse ' were excluded. William Penn's first wife was a daughter of this house, though he was not himself in Buckinghamshire till 1668, and never had a perma- nent home there. [2]
It was still before the Restoration that Ellwood went through his first struggles with his father for liberty to worship with his new friends and follow his new convictions. [3] But it was not until the Restoration, and the consequent requirement of the oath of allegiance from all loyal subjects, that the worst troubles of the Quakers began. Ellwood was arrested in London in 1660, and imprisoned with thirty others in Oxford gaol for refusing the oath [4] ; again in 1662, after the outbreak of the Fifth Monarchy men, he was with many others in Bridewell and Newgate, and suffered a good deal from the unhealthy conditions of prison life at this time [5] ; in 1665 and 1666 he was for short periods in Aylesbury gaol. [6] Isaac Penington was imprisoned six times between 1660 and 1670, for the most part in Aylesbury gaol ; one of these times he was removed with sixty or seventy others to a malthouse behind the gaol, which Ellwood says was ' not fit for a dog- house,' and open on one side to the weather ; the gaoler had put them there because the prison was over-full, and he knew their principles would not allow them to attempt an escape.[7] Others were sent to the house of correction near High Wycombe in 1664.[8]
The year of the Restoration brought back a few of the ejected incumbents to their old parishes, as at Great Mario w, Aylesbury, Bier- ton, Moulsoe, Turweston, and Hambleden ; George Roberts, rector of the last named place, being appointed archdeacon of Winchester.[9] Besides these there were others who rejoiced in the restoration of the liturgy. Matthew Bate, rector of Maids Moreton, triumphantly records in his parish register that in spite of the ordinance of 1653, legalizing merely civil registration and marriage, 'There was never any
- ↑ Fox was in Buckinghamshire in 1656, and again ten times before 1681 (George Fox, Journal (latest edition), i. 333, 440, and ii 79, 90, etc.).
- ↑ W. H. Summers, Memories of Jordans, 131-2. It was at West Wycombe that Penn had a public controversy with a Baptist, Jeremy Ives.
- ↑ The chief cause of offence was his refusal to take off his hat before his father, and to use the plural pronoun in addressing him. It seems strange to us that such obstinacy and discourtesy to a parent could be justified on religious grounds by one so gentle and amiable as Thomas Ellwood ; yet his own account of the matter shows that to him at any rate there was a real principle involved in this and many other apparently trifling matters (Ellwood, Autobiography, 42-63).
- ↑ Ibid. 99-103.
- ↑ Ibid. 169.
- ↑ Ibid. 206 ; W. H. Summers, Memories of Jordans, 95.
- ↑ Ellwood, Autobiography, 121.
- ↑ Parker, History of Wycombe, 64 (from the Borough Records). There were of course a great many other cases of imprisonment, fines, and other penalties inflicted on Quakers at this period ; but it is not necessary to give a complete account of them in an article on the history of the Church in this county.
- ↑ Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy, 240, 326, 339.
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