Milk. What song was it, I pray? was it, 'Come shepherds deck your heds:' or, 'As at noon Dulcina rested' or 'Philida flouts me?'

Pisc. No, it is none of those it is a song that your daughter sung the first part, and you sung the answer

to it.

Milk. O I know it now, I learn'd the first part in my golden age, when I was about the age of my daughter; and the later part, which indeed fits me best, but two or three years ago; you shal, God willing, hear them both. Come Maudlin, sing the first part to the gentlemen with a merrie heart, and Ile sing the second.

Of Hampshire Trouts and Sir Francis Bacon. Pisc. And you are to know, that in Hampshire (which I think exceeds all England for pleasant brooks, and store of trouts) they use to catch trouts in the night by the light of a torch or straw, which when they have discovered, they strike with a trout spear: this kind of way they catch many, but I would not believe it till I was an eye-witness of it, nor like it now I have seen it. Viat. But master, do not trouts see us in the night? Pisc. Yes, and hear, and smel too, both then and in the day time, for Gesner observes, the otter smels a fish forty furlongs off him in the water; and that it may be true is affirmed by Sir Francis Bacon (in the eighth century of his natural history), who there proves that waters may be the medium of sounds, by demonstrating it thus, that if you knock two stones together very deep under the water, those that stand on a bank neer to that place may hear the noise without any diminution of it by the water. He also offers the like experiment concerning the letting an anchor fall by a very long cable or rope on a rock, or the sand within the sea and this being so wel observed and demonstrated, as it is by that learned man, has made me to believe that eeles unbed themselves, and stir at the noise of thunder, and not only as some think, by the motion or the stirring of the earth, which is occasioned by that thunder.

And this reason of Sir Francis Bacons has made me crave pardon of one that I laughed at, for affirming that he knew carps come to a certain place in a pond to be fed at the ringing of a bel: and it shall be a rule for me to make as little noise as I can when I am fishing, until Sir Francis Bacon be confuted, which I shall give any man leave to do, and so leave off this philosophical discourse for a discourse of fishing.

Of which my next shall be to tell you, it is certain, that certain fields neer Lemster, a town in Herefordshire, are observed, that they make the sheep that graze upon them more fat than the next, and also to bear finer wool; that is to say, that that year in which they feed in such a particular pasture, they shall yeeld finer wool than the year before they came to feed in it, and coarser again if they shall return to their former pasture, and again return to a finer wool being fed in the fine wool ground. Which I tell you, that you may the better believe that I am certain, if I catch a trout in one meadow, he shall be white and faint, and very like to be lowsie; and as certainly if I catch a trout in the next meadow, he shal be strong, and red, and lusty, and much better meat trust me (scholer) I have caught many a trout in a particular meadow, that the very shape and inamelled colour of him has joyed me to look upon him, and I have with Solomon concluded, every thing is beautifull in season.

In the edition of Mr Thomas Westwood's Chronicle of The Compleat Angler,' published on the two hundredth anniversary of Walton's death, there are enumerated 97 editions, as compared with over 120 in 1901-including editions by [Sir] John Hawkins (1760); Major (1824, 1835, 1844); Sir Harris Nicolas, with a good Life of Walton (1836); Dr G. W. Bethune (New York, 1847); Ed. Jesse and H. G. Bohn (1856); Dowling (1857); Marston (2 vols. 1888); Harting (2 vols. 1893); Andrew Lang (1896); and a fac-simile of the original edition (1876; with introduction by Le Gallienne, 1896). A copy of the first edition brought £52 in 1874, £310 in 1891, and £415 in 1896. In 1893 the first five editions fetched £800. Of the Lives there are editions by Zouch (1796), Major (1825), and A. H. Bullen, with W. Dowling's Life (1884).

James Harrington (1611–77), the author of Oceana, was the son of Sir Sapcotes Harrington of Rand in Lincolnshire, but was born at his maternal grandfather's house of Upton in Northamptonshire, studied at Oxford, and for some time was a pupil of the famous Chillingworth. Afterwards he went abroad for several years. While at the Hague and at Venice he imbibed many of those Republican views which marked his writings. At Rome he attracted attention by refusing on a public occasion to kiss the Pope's toe-conduct which he afterwards adroitly defended to the King of England by saying that, 'having had the honour of kissing His Majesty's hand, he thought it beneath him to kiss the toe of any other monarch.' During the Civil War he was appointed by the parliamentary commissioners to be one of the personal attendants of King Charles, who in 1647 nominated him one of the grooms of his bed-chamber. Except upon politics the king was fond of Harrington's conversation; and the king's kindliness made Harrington most anxious that a reconciliation between king and Parliament might be effected. He was much distressed when the king was brought to the scaffold. During the sway of Cromwell, Harrington occupied himself in composing the Oceana, which was published in 1656. The work is a political romance of a new England completely reconstituted (as he hoped, under Cromwell himself, Olphaus Megaletor) in accordance with the author's idea of a truly free but distinctly aristocratic republic. His model was partly based on the republics of Greece, Rome, and Venice, for which he 'ransacked the ancient archives of prudence,' but was very largely his own invention. Cromwell's actual English republic was by no means to Harrington's mind. All power, he maintains, depends upon property-chiefly upon land. An agrarian law should fix the balance of lands; and the government should be established upon an equal agrarian basis, rising into the superstructure, or three orders, the senate debating and proposing, the people resolving, and the magistracy executing by an equal rotation through the suffrage of the people given by ballot.' There is frequent polemic against Hobbes, whom he rejoices to confute by arguments from 'Machiavill.' After the publication of the Oceana Harrington continued to spread Republican opinions by founding a debating club called the Rota, and by holding conversations with

Marpesia, being the northern part of the same island, is the dry nurse of a populous and hardy nation, but where the staddels [small trees amongst underwood; i.e. nobles] have been formerly too thick; whence their courage answered not their hardinesse except in the nobility, who governed that country much after the manner of Poland, but that the king was not elective till the people received their liberty; the yoke of the nobility being broken by the commonwealth of Oceana, which in grateful return is thereby provided with an inexhaustible magazine of auxiliaries.

Panopea, the soft mother of a slothful and pusillanimous people, is a neighbour island, anciently subjected by the arms of Oceana; since almost depopulated for shaking off the yoke, and at length replanted with a new

race.

But, through what virtues of the soyl or vice of the air soever it be, they come still to degenerate. Wherefore seeing it is neither likely to yield men fit for arms, nor necessary it should, it had been the interest of Oceana so to have disposed of this province, being both rich in the nature of the soil, and full of commodious ports for trade, that it might have been ordered for the best in relation to her purse, which in my opinion, if it had been thought upon in time, might have been best done by planting it with Jewes, allowing them their own rites and laws; for that would have brought them suddainly from all parts of the world, and in sufficient numbers. And though the Jews be now altogether for merchandize, yet in the land of Canaan (except since their exile from whence they have not been landlords) they were altogether for agriculture; and there is no cause why a man should doubt, but having a fruitful country, and excellent ports too, they would be good at both. Panopea, well peopled, would be worth a matter of four millions dry rents; that is, besides the advantage of the agriculture and trade, which, with a nation of that industry, comes at least to as much more. Wherefore Panopea, being farmed out to the Jews and their heirs for ever, for the pay of a provincial army to protect them during the term of seven years, and for two millions annual revenue from that time forward, besides the customs, which would pay the provincial army, would have been a bargain of such advantage, both to them and this commonwealth, as is not to be found otherwise by either. To receive the Jews after any other manner into a commonwealth were to maim it; for they of all nations never incorporate, but taking up the room of a limb, are of no use or office to the body, while they suck the nourishment which would sustain a natural and useful member.

If Panopea had been so disposed of, that knapsac with the Marpesian auxiliary, had been an inestimale treasure; the situation of these countries being islan (as appears by Venice how advantagious such a one i, to the like government) seems to have been designed by God for a commonwealth. And yet that, through the streightnesse of the place and defect of proper arms can be no more then a commonwealth for preservation; whereas this, reduced to the like government, is a com monwealth for increase, and upon the mightiest founda tion that any has been laid from the beginning of the world to this day.

'Illam arctâ capiens Neptunus compede stringit : Hanc autem glaucis captus complectitur ulnis.' The sea gives law to the growth of Venice, but the growth of Oceana gives law to the sea.

These countries, having been anciently distinct and hostile kingdoms, came by Morpheus the Marpesian [James VI. and I.], who succeeded by hereditary right to the crown of Oceana, not only to be joined under one head, but to be cast, as it were by a charm, into that profound sleep, which, broken at length by the trumpet of civil war, hath produced those effects that have given the occasion unto the ensuing discourse, divided into four parts.

The Election of Pastors.

The sixth order, directing, 'In case a parson or vicar of a parish comes to be removed by death or by the censors, that the congregation of the parish assemble and depute one or two elders by the ballot, who upon the charge of the parish shall repair to one of the universities of this nation with a certificate signed by the overseers, and addressed to the Vice-Chancellor, which certificate, giving notice of the death or removal of the parson or vicar, of the value of the parsonage or vicarage, and of the desire of the congregation to receive a probationer from that university, the Vice-Chancellor, upon the receipt thereof, shall call a convocation, and having made choyce of a fit person, shall return him in due time to the parish, where the person so returned shall return the full fruits of the benefice or vicaridge, and do the duty of the parson or vicar, for the space of one year, as probationer; and that being expired, the congregation of the elders shall put their probationer to the ballot, and if he attains not to two parts in three of the suffrage affirmative, he shall take his leave of the parish, and they shall send in like manner as before for another probationer; but if their probationer obtains two parts in three of the suffrage affirmative, he is then pastor of that parish. And the pastour of the parish shall pray with the congregation, preach the Word, and administer the sacraments to the same, according to the directory to be hereafter appointed by the parliament. Neverthe lesse such as are of gathered congregations, or from time to time shall join with any of them, are in nowise obliged to this way of electing their teachers, or to give their votes in this case, but wholly left to the liberty of their own consciences, and to that way of worship which they shall choose, being not Popish, Jewish, or idolatrous. And to the end they may be the better protected by the State in the exercise of the same, they are desired to make choyce, and in such manner as they best like, of certain magistrates in every one of their congregations, which we could wish might be four in each of them, to be auditors in cases of differences or distaste, if any

through variety of opinions, that may be grievous or injurious to them, shall fall out. And such auditors or magistrates shall have power to examine the matter, and inform themselves, to the end that if they think it of sufficient weight, they may acquaint the phylarch [ruler of the tribe or county] with it, or introduce it into the councill of religion; where all such causes as those magistrates introduce shall from time be heard and determined according to such laws as are or shall hereafter be provided by the parliament for the just defence of the liberty of conscience.'

One of the liveliest passages is that in which a hearty defender of the old régime makes a very free assault, by way of reductio ad absurdum, on the new political model, the archon or supreme magistrate included:

A Conservative Counterblast. Nevertheless my Lord Epimonus, who with much ado had been held till now, found it midsummer moon, and broke out of bedlam in this manner :

'My Lord Archon,—

'I have a singing in my head like that of a cartwheel, my brains are upon a rotation; and some are so merry, that a man cannot speak his griefs, but if your highshod prerogative, and those same slouching fellowes your tribunes, do not take my lord strategus's and my lord orator's heads, and jole them together under the canopy, then let me be ridiculous to all posterity. For here is a commonwealth, to which if a man should take that of the 'prentices in their ancient administration of justice at Shrovetide, it were an aristocracy. You have set the very rabble with troncheons in their hands, and the gentry of this nation, like cocks with scarlet gills, and the golden combs of their salaries to boot, lest they should not be thrown at.

'Not a night can I sleep for some horrid apparition or other; one while these myrmidons are measuring silks by their quarter-staves, another stuffing their greasy pouches with my lord high treasurer's jacobusses [sovereigns of James I.'s coining]. For they are above a thousand in arms to three hundred, which, their gowns being pulled over their ears, are but in their doublets and hose. But what do I speak of a thousand? There be two thousand in every tribe, that is, a hundred thousand in the whole nation, not only in the posture of an army, but in a civill capacity sufficient to give us what lawes they please. Now everybody knows that the lower sort of people regard nothing but money; and you say it is the duty of a legislator to presume all men to be wicked: wherefore they must fall upon the richer, as they are an army; or, lest their minds should misgive them in such a villany, you have given them encouragement that they have a nearer way, seeing it may be done every whit as well as by the overballancing power which they have in elections. There is a fair which is annually kept in the centre of these territories at Kiberton [Kirton-in-Lindsey?], a town famous for ale, and frequented by good fellows; where there is a solemnity of the pipers and fidlers of this nation (I know not whether Lacedemon, where the senate kept account of the stops of the flutes and of the fiddle-strings of that commonwealth, had any such custom) called the bull-running; and he that catches and holds the bull, is the annual and supream magistrate of that comitia or congregation, called king piper, without whose license it is not lawful for any

of those citizens to enjoy the liberty of his calling; nor is he otherwise legitimately qualified (or civitate donatus) to lead apes or bears in any perambulation of the same. Mine host of the Bear, in Kiberton, the father of ale, and patron of good football and cudgel players, has any time since I can remember been grand chancellor of this order. Now, say I, seeing great things arise from small beginnings, what should hinder the people, prone to their own advantage and loving money, from having intelligence conveyed to them by this same king piper and his chancellor, with their loyal subjects the minstrills and bearwards, masters of ceremonies, to which there is great recourse in their respective perambulations, and which they will commission and instruct, with directions to all the tribes, willing and commanding them, that as they wish their own good, they choose no other into the next primum mobile [outermost and uppermost sphere and great source of motion] but of the ablest cudgel and football players? Which done as soon as said, your primum mobile, consisting of no other stuff, must of necessity be drawn forth into your nebulones [rogues] and your galimofrys [the rabble]; and so the silken purses of your senate and prerogative being made of sowes' ears, most of them blacksmiths, they will strike while the iron is hot, and beat your estates into hobnails, mine host of the Bear being strategus [supreme military commander], and king piper lord orator. Well, my Lords, it might have been otherwise exprest, but this is well enough a-conscience. In your way, the wit of man shall not prevent this or the like inconvenience; but if this (for I have conferred with artists) be a mathematical demonstra tion, I could kneel to you, that ere it be too late we might return to some kind of sobriety.

'If we empty our purses with these pomps, salaries, coaches, lacquays, and pages, what can the people say less than that we have dressed a senate and a prerogative for nothing but to go to the park with the ladies?'

Stinginess of Cromwell's Commonwealth.

'But there is such a selling, such a Jewish humour in our republicans, that I cannot tell what to say to it; onely this, any man that knows what belongs to a commonwealth, or how diligent every nation in that case has been to preserve her ornaments, and shall see the waste lately made (the woods adjoyning to this city, which served for the delight and health of it, being cut down to be sold for three pence), will tell you that they who did such things would never have made a commonwealth. The like may be said of the ruine or damage done upon our cathedrals, ornaments in which this nation excels all others. Nor shall this ever be excused upon the score of religion; for though it be true that God dwells not in houses made with hands, yet you cannot hold your assemblies but in such houses, and these are of the best that have been made with hands. Nor is it well argued that they are pompous, and therefore prophane, or less proper for divine service, seeing the Christians in the primitive Church chose to meet with one accord in the Temple, so far were they from any inclination to pull it down.'

There is a Life of Harrington in the edition of his works by the famous Deist, John Toland (1700); see also Aubrey's Letters and Masson's Milton. Professor Henry Morley reprinted the Oceana in 1887, but omitted the amusing Epistle to the Reader and the amazing list of errata.

A

Colonel Edward Saxby, who died distracted in the Tower in 1658, lived a life of curious adventure and intrigue, and merited a place in the history of English literature by writing that most audacious of political pamphlets, Killing no Murder. Suffolk man, he took service in Cromwell's Horse about 1643, held command at the siege of Tantallon Castle in 1651, was sent to negotiate with the Frondeurs and rebellious Huguenots in France, but as an extreme Republican quarrelled finally with Cromwell when he assumed the Protectorate. He zealously intrigued against Cromwell with royalist, Catholic, and Spanish agents; tried to combine levellers and royalists against the usurper, and arranged more than one scheme for Cromwell's assassination by strange engines,' the firing of Whitehall and the like; and early in 1657 got his famous exhortation to tyrannicide printed in Holland and smuggled into England. The pamphlet, professing to be by one William Allen, was courteously dedicated to the Protector himself, the ironical argument being that, seeing Cromwell's life had proved such an unmitigated curse to the nation, Cromwell, if he were the public-spirited man he professed to be, was bound to welcome sudden death at the hands of a patriotic assassin as a manifest blessing to all concerned.

6

This very

ingenious irony is not long sustained, and an elaborate argument is carried out to prove-with scriptural examples and quotations from Sophocles and Tully, Plato and Aristotle, Grotius and Machiavel that Cromwell is a tyrant of the worst description, who ought to be summarily annihilated like a wild beast by any one who had the chance. The argument is ingeniously managed; the historic parallels and applications are many of them amusingly plausible. The style is direct, effective, and at times even powerful; and the influence of the work unquestionably may be traced in the work of subsequent English pamphleteers. There is a concise statement of the origin of society in a social contract, sometimes regarded as the original contribution of Rousseau to eighteenthcentury political philosophy, but traceable in Locke, Hobbes, and even the Greek sophists.

The Social Contract.

And indeed, as by the laws of God and Nature, the care, defence, and support of the family lies upon every man whose it is, so by the same law there is due unto every man from his family a subjection and obedience in compensation of that support. But several families uniting themselves together to make up one body of a Commonwealth, and being independent one of another, without any natural superiority or obligation, nothing can introduce amongst them a disparity of rule and subjection but some power that is over them, which power none can pretend to have but God and themselves. Wherefore all power which is lawfully exercised over such a society of men (which from the end of its institution we call a Commonwealth) must necessarily be derived, either from the appointment of God Almighty, who is Supreme Lord of all and every part, or from the consent of the

society itself, who have the next power to his of disposing of their own liberty as they shall think fit for their own good. This power God hath given to societies of men, as well as he gave it to particular persons; and when He interposes not his own authority, and appoints not himself who shall be his vicegerents and rule under Him, He leaves it to none but the people themselves to make the election, whose benefit is the end of all government. Nay, when He himself hath been pleased to appoint rulers for that people which He was pleased peculiarly to own, He many times made the choice, but left the confirmation and ratification of that choice to the people themselves. So Saul was chosen by God, and anointed king by his prophet, but made king by all the people at Gilgal. David was anointed king by the same prophet, but was afterwards, after Saul's death, confirmed by the people of Judah, and seven years after by the elders of Israel, the people's deputies at Chebron.

The Protector a Tyrant.

This being considered, have not the people of England much reason to ask the Protector this question, 'Quis constituit te virum principem et judicem super nos?' Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? If God made thee, make it manifest to us. If the people, where did we meet to do it? Who took our subscriptions? To whom deputed we our authority? And when and where did those deputies make the choice? Sure these interrogations are very natural, and I believe would much trouble his Highness's Council and his Junto to answer. In a word, that I may not tire my reader, who will not want proofs for what I say if he wants not memory: if to change the Government without the people's consent; if to dissolve their representatives by force, and disannul their acts; if to give the name of the people's representatives to confederates of his own, that he may establish iniquity by a law; if to take away men's lives out of all course of law by certain murderers of his own appointment, whom he names a High Court of Justice: if to decimate men's estates, and by his own power to impose upon the people what taxes he pleases, and to maintain all by force of arms; if, I say, all this does make a tyrant, his own impudence cannot deny but he is as complete a one as ever hath been since there have been societies of men. He that hath done and does all this is the person for whose preservation the people of England must pray; but certainly if they do, it is for the same reason that the old woman of Syracuse prayed for the long life of the tyrant Dionysius, lest the devil should come next. . Tyrants accomplish their ends much more by fraud than force. . . . It is but unnecessary to say that had not his Highness had a faculty to be fluent in his tears, and eloquent in his execrations; had he not had spongy eyes, and a supple conscience; and besides to do with a people of great faith but little wit, his courage and the rest of his moral virtues, with the help of his janissaries, had never been able so far to advance him out of the reach of justice that we should have need to call for any other hand to remove him but that of the hangman. Lastly, above

all things they pretend a love to God and religion. This Aristotle calls artium tyrannicarum potissimam,” the surest and best of all the arts of tyrants; and we all know his Highness hath found it so by experience. He hath found, indeed, that in godliness there is great gain, and that preaching and praying well managed will

...

His

obtain other kingdoms as well as that of heaven. indeed have been pious arms, for he hath conquered most by those of the Church, by prayers and tears. But the truth is, were it not for our honour to be governed by one that can manage both the spiritual and temporal sword, and, Roman-like, to have our emperor our high-priest, we might have had preaching at a much cheaper rate, and it would have cost us but our tithes which now costs us all. . . . And then if he be not a tyrant, we must confess we have no definition nor description of a tyrant left us, and may well imagine there is no such thing in Nature, and that it is only a notion and a name. But if there be such a beast, and we do at all believe what we see and feel, let us now inquire, according to the method we proposed, whether this be a beast of game that we are to give law to, or a beast of prey to destroy with all means which are allowable and fair?

John Pearson (1613-86), born at Great Snoring, Norfolk, son of the Archdeacon of Suffolk, was educated at Eton and at Queen's and King's Colleges, Cambridge. In 1640, appointed chaplain to the Lord-Keeper Finch, he was presented to the Suffolk rectory of Thorington; in 1659 he published his learned Exposition of the Creed, and edited the Golden Remains of Hales of Eton. In 1660 he became rector of St Christopher's in London, a prebendary of Ely, Archdeacon of Surrey, and Master of Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1661 he was Baxter's principal antagonist at the Savoy Conference, and was appointed to the Lady Margaret chair of Divinity at Cambridge; in 1662 he became Master of Trinity, and in 1673 Bishop of Chester. He defended the genuineness of the Ignatian epistles (1672), and in 1684 published his Annales Cyprianici. His Exposition of the Creed is a standard work in English divinity, remarkable equally for argument, arrangement, and style. Bentley said Pearson's 'very dross was gold' an extravagant compliment; but most subsequent authorities have borne testimony to the merits of the Exposition. Admirable editions of it are by E. Burton (1833) and Temple Chevallier (1849; revised by Sinker, 1882); of the Minor Theological Works, with Life, by Archdeacon Churton (1844).

The Resurrection.

Furthermore, besides the principles of which he [man] consists, and the actions which flow from us, the consideration of the things without us, and the natural course of variations in the creature, will render the resurrection yet more highly probable. Every space of twenty-four hours teacheth thus much, in which there is always a revolution amounting to a resurrection. The day dies into a night, and is buried in silence and in darkness; in the next morning it appeareth again and reviveth, opening the grave of darkness, rising from the dead of night: this is a diurnal resurrection. As the day dies into night, so doth the summer into winter: the sap is said to descend into the root, and there it lies buried in the ground; the earth is covered with snow, or crusted with frost, and becomes a general sepulchre ; when the spring appeareth, all begin to rise; the plants

and flowers peep out of their graves, revive and grow, and flourish: this is the annual resurrection. The corn by which we live, and for want of which we perish with famine, is notwithstanding cast upon the earth and buried in the ground, with a design that it may corrupt and, being corrupted, may revive and multiply: our bodies are fed by this constant experiment, and we continue this present life by succession of resurrections. Thus all things are repaired by corrupting, are preserved by perishing, and revived by dying; and can we think that man, the lord of all these things, which thus die and revive for him, should be detained in death as never to live again? Is it imaginable that God should thus restore all things to man, and not restore man to himself? If there were no other consideration but of the principles of human nature, of the liberty and remunerability of human actions, and of the natural revolutions and resurrections of other creatures, it were abundantly sufficient to render the resurrection of our bodies highly probable. We must not rest in this school of nature, nor settle our persuasions upon likelihoods; but as we passed from an apparent possibility into a high presumption and probability, so must we pass from thence unto a full assurance of an infallible certainty. And of this indeed we cannot be assured but by the revelation of the will of God; upon his power we must conclude that we may, from his will that we shall, rise from the dead. Now the power of God is known unto all men, and therefore all men may infer from thence a possibility; but the will of God is not revealed unto all men, and therefore all have not an infallible certainty of the resurrection.

James Nayler (? 1617-60), not altogether unreasonably nicknamed the 'Quaker Messiah,' ranks amongst the foremost Quaker writers for depth of thought, spiritual power, and unstudied eloquence. He was the son of a Yorkshire yeoman, settled in Wakefield, joined the Parliamentary army, and became a preacher. In 1651 he became a Quaker, and was the most conspicuous of Fox's early coadjutors-insomuch that Baxter regarded him as the chief leader of the movement in these years, when recruits were swarming in from amongst ranters and visionaries of all kinds. His head was turned by the enthusiastic devotion to him of 'a few forward, conceited, imaginary women,' as his friends called them, whom he allowed to kiss his feet, to call him 'the lamb of God,' and cry before him as he rode into Bristol, 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Israel.' He did not assume such titles to himself, and when arrested in 1656 affirmed that these honours were paid to 'Christ within him.' He was found guilty of horrid blasphemy by a committee of the House of Commons, just escaped sentence of death, was pilloried, whipped, had his tongue pierced with a hot iron, his forehead branded with a great B, and in this miserable case was thrown into prison, where he remained, spite of contrition and petitions to Cromwell, till after the Protector's death. He was released in 1659, made public confession, and with Fox's sanction resumed preaching and lecturing. He died in Huntingdonshire in 1660, on a journey afoot from London to his native county.