G.F.
“When thou went from York, the First-day after thou wast at Richard Shipton’s, that day I had appointed a meeting ten miles from York, where there had not been one before. But the priest and the constable got a warrant on the seventh day, and put thy name only in the warrant, for they had heard that thou wast to be there. They came with weapons and staves, and cried, ‘Where is Mr. Fox?’ over and over; many Friends being there, they concluded thou wast among them. But those raveners, being disappointed, plucked me down and abused me, and beat some Friends, and then took me before a magistrate, but he set me at liberty.”
Then I visited Friends at Whitby and Scarbro’. When at Scarbro’, the governor hearing I was come, sent to invite me to his house, saying, “surely I would not be so unkind as not to come and see him and his wife.” After the meeting I went up to visit him, and he received me very courteously and lovingly.
Having visited most of the meetings in Yorkshire, the Wolds, and Holderness, I came to Henry Jackson’s, where I had a great meeting. Thence to Thomas Taylor’s, and so to John Moor’s at Eldreth, where we had a very large meeting; the Lord’s power and presence were eminently amongst us. Not far from this place lay Colonel Kirby, lame of the gout, who had threatened that “if ever I came near he would send me to prison again; and had bid forty pounds to any man that could take me;” as I was credibly informed.
After this I came into Staffordshire, and Cheshire, where we had many large and precious meetings. I had a very large one at William Barnes’s house, about two miles from Warrington; and though Colonel Kirby was out again, as violent in breaking up meetings as before, and was then at Warrington, the Lord did not suffer him to come to this meeting; and so we were preserved out of his hands.