Part 12

Then went we up again to our friends in Newgate, and gave them an account of what had passed, and having taken a solemn leave of them, we made up our packs to be gone. But before I pass from Newgate, I think it not amiss to give the reader some little account of what I observed while I was there.

The common side of Newgate is generally accounted, as it really is, the worst part of that prison; not so much from the place as the people, it being usually stocked with the veriest rogues and meanest sort of felons and pickpockets, who not being able to pay chamber-rent on the master’s side, are thrust in there. And if they come in bad, to be sure they do no go out better; for here they have the opportunity to instruct one another in their art, and impart to each other what improvements they have made therein.

The common hall, which is the first room over the gate, is a good place to walk in when the prisoners are out of it, saving the danger of catching some cattle which they may have left in it, and there I used to walk in a morning before they were let up, and sometimes in the daytime when they have been there.

They all carried themselves respectfully towards me, which I imputed chiefly to this, that when any of our women friends came there to visit the prisoners, if they had not relations of their own there to take care of them, I, as being a young man and more at leisure than most others, for I could not play the tailor there, was forward to go down with them to the grate, and see them safe out. And sometimes they have left money in my hands for the felons, who at such times were very importunate beggars, which I forthwith distributed among them in bread, which was to be had in the place. But so troublesome an office it was, that I thought one had as good have had a pack of hungry hounds about one, as these, when they knew there was a dole to be given. Yet this, I think, made them a little the more observant to me; for they would dispose themselves to one side of the room, that they might make way for me to walk on the other.

For having, as I hinted before, made up our packs and taken our leave of our friends, whom we were to leave behind, we took our bundles on our shoulders, and walked two and two abreast through the Old Bailey into Fleet Street, and so to Old Bridewell. And it being about the middle of the afternoon, and the streets pretty full of people, both the shopkeepers at their doors and passengers in the way would stop us, and ask us what we were and whither we were going; and when we had told them we were prisoners going from one prison to another, from Newgate to Bridewell, “What!” said they, “without a keeper?”—“No,” said we, “for our word, which we have given, is our keeper.” Some thereupon would advise us not to go to prison, but to go home. But we told them we could not do so; we could suffer for our testimony, but could not fly from it. I do not remember we had any abuse offered us, but were generally pitied by the people.

When we were come to Bridewell, we were not put up into the great room in which we had been before, but into a low room in another fair court, which had a pump in the middle of it. And here we were not shut up as before, but had the liberty of the court to walk in, and of the pump to wash or drink at. And indeed we might easily have gone quite away if we would, there being a passage through the court into the street; but we were true and steady prisoners, and looked upon this liberty, arising from their confidence in us, to be a kind of parole upon us; so that both conscience and honour stood now engaged for our true imprisonment.

Adjoining to this room wherein we were was such another, both newly fitted up for workhouses, and accordingly furnished with very great blocks for beating hemp upon, and a lusty whipping-post there was in each. And it was said that Richard Brown had ordered those blocks to be provided for the Quakers to work on, resolving to try his strength with us in that case; but if that was his purpose, it was overruled, for we never had any work offered us, nor were we treated after the manner of those that are to be so used. Yet we set ourselves to work on them; for being very large, they served the tailors for shop-boards, and others wrought upon them as they had occasion; and they served us very well for tables to eat on.

We had also, besides this room, the use of our former chamber above, to go into when we thought fit; and thither sometimes I withdrew, when I found a desire for retirement and privacy, or had something on my mind to write, which could not so well be done in company. And indeed about this time my spirit was more than ordinarily exercised, though on very different subjects. For, on the one hand, the sense of the exceeding love and goodness of the Lord to me, in His gracious and tender dealings with me, did deeply affect my heart, and caused me to break forth in a song of thanksgiving and praise to Him; and, on the other hand, a sense of the profaneness, debaucheries, cruelties, and other horrid impieties of the age, fell heavy on me, and lay as a pressing weight upon my spirit; and I breathed forth the following hymn to God, in acknowledgment of His great goodness to me, profession of my grateful love to Him, and supplication to Him for the continuance of His kindness to me, in preserving me from the snares of the enemy, and keeping me faithful unto Himself:—

Thee, Thee alone, O God, I fear, In Thee do I confide; Thy presence is to me more dear Than all things else beside. Thy virtue, power, life, and light, Which in my heart do shine, Above all things are my delight: O make them always mine! Thy matchless love constrains my life, Thy life constrains my love, To be to Thee as chaste a wife As is the turtle-dove To her elect, espoused mate, Whom she will not forsake, Nor can be brought to violate The bond she once did make; Just so my soul doth cleave to Thee, As to her only head, With whom she longs conjoin’d to be In bond of marriage-bed. But, ah, alas! her little fort Is compassed about; Her foes about her thick resort, Within and eke without. How numerous are they now grown! How wicked their intent! O let thy mighty power be shown, Their mischief to prevent. They make assaults on every side, But Thou stand’st in the gap; Their batt’ring-rams make breaches wide, But still Thou mak’st them up. Sometimes they use alluring wiles To draw into their power; And sometimes weep like crocodiles; But all is to devour. Thus they beset my feeble heart With fraud, deceit, and guile, Alluring her from Thee to start, And Thy pure rest defile. But, oh! the breathing and the moan, The sighings of the seed, The groanings of the grieved one, Do sorrows in me breed. And that immortal, holy birth, The offspring of Thy breath (To whom Thy love brings life and mirth, As doth thy absence, death); That babe, that seed, that panting child, Which cannot Thee forsake, In fear to be again beguiled, Doth supplication make: O suffer not Thy chosen one, Who puts her trust in Thee, And hath made Thee her choice alone, Ensnared again to be.

_Bridewell_, _London_, 1662.

In this sort did I spend some leisure hours during my confinement in Bridewell, especially after our return from Newgate thither, when we had more liberty, and more opportunity and room for retirement and thought: for, as the poet said,

_Carmina scribentes secessum et otia quærunt_.

They who would write in measure, Retire where they may, stillness have and pleasure.

And this privilege we enjoyed by the indulgence of our keeper, whose heart God disposed to favour us. So that both the master and his porter were very civil and kind to us, and had been so indeed all along. For when we were shut up before, the porter would readily let some of us go home in an evening, and stay at home till next morning; which was a great conveniency to men of trade and business, which I being free from, forbore asking for myself, that I might not hinder others.

This he observed, and asked me when I meant to ask to go out; I told him I had not much occasion nor desire, yet at some time or other, perhaps, I might have; but when I had I would ask him but once, and if he then denied me, I would ask him no more.

After we were come back from Newgate I had a desire to go thither again, to visit my friends who were prisoners there, more especially my dear friend and father in Christ, Edward Burrough, who was then a prisoner, with many Friends more, in that part of Newgate which was then called Justice Hall. Whereupon, the porter coming in my way, I asked him to let me go out for an hour or two, to see some friends of mine that evening.

He, to enhance the kindness, made it a matter of some difficulty, and would have me stay till another night. I told him I would be at a word with him, for, as I had told him before that if he denied me I would ask him no more, so he should find I would keep to it.

He was no sooner gone out of my sight but I espied his master crossing the court; wherefore, stepping to him, I asked him if he was willing to let me go out for a little while, to see some friends of mine that evening. “Yes,” said he, “very willingly;” and thereupon away walked I to Newgate, where having spent the evening among Friends, I returned in good time.

Under this easy restraint we lay until the Court sat at the Old Bailey again; and then, whether it was that the heat of the storm was somewhat abated, or by what other means Providence wrought it, I know not, we were called to the bar, and, without further question, discharged.

Whereupon we returned to Bridewell again, and having raised some money among us, and therewith gratified both the master and his porter for their kindness to us, we spent some time in a solemn meeting, to return our thankful acknowledgment to the Lord, both for his preservation of us in prison and deliverance of us out of it; and then taking a solemn farewell of each other, we departed with bag and baggage. And I took care to return my hammock to the owner, with due acknowledgment of his great kindness in lending it me.

Being now at liberty, I visited more generally my friends that were still in prison, and more particularly my friend and benefactor William Penington, at his house, and then went to wait upon my Master Milton, with whom yet I could not propose to enter upon my intermitted studies until I had been in Buckinghamshire, to visit my worthy friends Isaac Penington and his virtuous wife, with other friends in that country.

Thither therefore I betook myself, and the weather being frosty, and the ways by that means clean and good, I walked it throughout in a day, and was received by my friends there with such demonstration of hearty kindness as made my journey very easy to me.

I had spent in my imprisonment that twenty shillings which I had received of Wm. Penington, and twenty of the forty which had been sent me from Mary Penington, and had the remainder then about me. That therefore I now returned to her, with due acknowledgment of her husband’s and her great care of me, and liberality to me in the time of my need. She would have had me keep it; but I begged of her to accept it from me again, since it was the redundancy of their kindness, and the other part had answered the occasion for which it was sent: and my importunity prevailed.

I intended only a visit hither, not a continuance, and therefore purposed, after I had stayed a few days to return to my lodging and former course in London, but Providence ordered it otherwise.

Isaac Penington had at that time two sons and one daughter, all then very young; of whom the eldest son, John Penington, and the daughter, Mary, the wife of Daniel Wharley, are yet living at the writing of this. And being himself both skilful and curious in pronunciation, he was very desirous to have them well grounded in the rudiments of the English tongue, to which end he had sent for a man out of Lancashire, whom, upon inquiry, he had heard of, who was undoubtedly the most accurate English teacher that ever I met with, or have heard of. His name was Richard Bradley. But as he pretended no higher than the English tongue, and had led them, by grammar rules, to the highest improvement they were capable of in that, he had then taken his leave of them, and was gone up to London, to teach an English school of Friends’ children there.

This put my friend to a fresh strait. He had sought for a new teacher to instruct his children in the Latin tongue, as the old had done in the English, but had not yet found one. Wherefore one evening, as we sat together by the fire in his bed-chamber (which for want of health he kept), he asked me, his wife being by, if I would be so kind to him as to stay a while with him till he could hear of such a man as he aimed at, and in the meantime enter his children in the rudiments of the Latin tongue.

This question was not more unexpected than surprising to me, and the more because it seemed directly to thwart my former purpose and undertaking, of endeavouring to improve myself by following my studies with my Master Milton, which this would give at least a present diversion from, and for how long I could not foresee.

But the sense I had of the manifold obligations I lay under to these worthy friends of mine shut out all reasonings, and disposed my mind to an absolute resignation of their desire that I might testify my gratitude by a willingness to do them any friendly service that I could be capable of.

And though I questioned my ability to carry on that work to its due height and proportion, yet as that was not proposed, but an initiation only by accidence into grammar, I consented to the proposal as a present expedient till a more qualified person should be found, without further treaty or mention of terms between us than that of mutual friendship. And to render this digression from my own studies the less uneasy to my mind, I recollected and often thought of that rule in Lilly:

_Qui docet indoctos_, _licet indoctissimus esset_, _Ipse brevi reliquis doctior esse queat_.

He that the unlearned doth teach may quickly be More learned than they, though most unlearned he.

With this consideration I undertook this province, and left it not until I married, which was not till the year 1669, near seven years from the time I came thither. In which time, having the use of my friend’s books, as well as of my own, I spent my leisure hours much in reading, not without some improvement to myself in my private studies, which (with the good success of my labours bestowed on the children, and the agreeableness of conversation which I found in the family) rendered my undertaking more satisfactory, and my stay there more easy to me.

But, alas! not many days (not to say weeks) had I been there, ere we were almost overwhelmed with sorrow for the unexpected loss of Edward Burrough, who was justly very dear to us all.

This not only good, but great good man, by a long and close confinement in Newgate through the cruel malice and malicious cruelty of Richard Brown, was taken away by hasty death, to the unutterable grief of very many, and unspeakable loss to the Church of Christ in general.

The particular obligation I had to him as the immediate instrument of my convincement, and high affection for him resulting therefrom, did so deeply affect my mind that it was some pretty time before my passion could prevail to express itself in words, so true I found those of the tragedian:

_Curæ leves loquuntur_, _Ingentes stupent_.

Light griefs break forth, and easily get vent, Great ones are through amazement closely pent.

At length, my muse, not bearing to be any longer mute, broke forth in the following

ACROSTIC,

WHICH SHE CALLED A PATHETIC ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF THAT DEAR AND FAITHFUL SERVANT OF GOD,

EDWARD BURROUGH,

_Who died the 14th of the Twelfth Month_, 1662.

And thus she introduceth it:

How long shall Grief lie smother’d? ah! how long Shall Sorrow’s signet seal my silent tongue? How long shall sighs me suffocate? and make My lips to quiver and my heart to ache? How long shall I with pain suppress my cries, And seek for holes to wipe my watery eyes? Why may not I, by sorrow thus oppressed, Pour forth my grief into another’s breast? If that be true which once was said by one, That “He mourns truly who doth mourn alone:” {180} Then may I truly say, my grief is true, Since it hath yet been known to very few. Nor is it now mine aim to make it known To those to whom these verses may be shown; But to assuage my sorrow-swollen heart, Which silence caused to taste so deep of smart. This is my end, that so I may prevent The vessel’s bursting by a timely vent.

_Quis talia fando_ _Temperet a lacrymis_!

Who can forbear, when such things spoke he hears, His grave to water with a flood of tears?

E cho ye woods, resound ye hollow places, L et tears and paleness cover all men’s faces. L et groans, like claps of thunder, pierce the air, W hile I the cause of my just grief declare, O that mine eyes could, like the streams of Nile O ’erflow their watery banks; and thou meanwhile D rink in my trickling tears, oh thirsty ground, S o might’st thou henceforth fruitfuler be found.

L ament, my soul, lament; thy loss is deep, A nd all that Sion love sit down and weep, M ourn, oh ye virgins, and let sorrow be E ach damsel’s dowry, and (alas, for me!) N e’er let my sobs and sighings have an end T ill I again embrace my ascended friend; A nd till I feel the virtue of his life T o consolate me, and repress my grief: I nfuse into my heart the oil of gladness O nce more, and by its strength remove that sadness N ow pressing down my spirit, and restore

F ully that joy I had in him before; O f whom a word I fain would stammer forth, R ather to ease my heart than show his worth:

H is worth, my grief, which words too shallow are I n demonstration fully to declare, S ighs, sobs, my best interpreters now are.

E nvy begone; black Momus quit the place; N e’er more, Zoilus, show thy wrinkled face, D raw near, ye bleeding hearts, whose sorrows are E qual with mine; in him ye had like share. A dd all your losses up, and ye shall see R emainder will be nought but woe is me. E ndeared lambs, ye that have the white stone, D o know full well his name—it is your own.

E ternitized be that right worthy name; D eath hath but kill’d his body, not his fame, W hich in its brightness shall for ever dwell, A nd like a box of ointment sweetly smell. R ighteousness was his robe; bright majesty D ecked his brow; his look was heavenly.

B old was he in his Master’s quarrel, and U ndaunted; faithful to his Lord’s command. R equiting good for ill; directing all R ight in the way that leads out of the fall. O pen and free to ev’ry thirsty lamb; U nspotted, pure, clean, holy, without blame. G lory, light, splendour, lustre, was his crown, H appy his change to him: the loss our own.

Unica post cineres virtus veneranda beatos Efficit.

_Virtue alone_, _which reverence ought to have_, _Doth make men happy_, _e’en beyond the grave_.

While I had thus been breathing forth my grief, In hopes thereby to get me some relief, I heard, methought, his voice say, “Cease to mourn: I live; and though the veil of flesh once worn Be now stript off, dissolved, and laid aside, My spirit’s with thee, and shall so abide.” This satisfied me; down I shrew my quill, Willing to be resigned to God’s pure will.

Having discharged this duty to the memory of my deceased friend, I went on in my new province, instructing my little pupils in the rudiments of the Latin tongue, to the mutual satisfaction of both their parents and myself. As soon as I had gotten a little money in my pocket, which as a premium without compact I received from them, I took the first opportunity to return to my friend William Penington the money which he had so kindly furnished me with in my need, at the time of my imprisonment in Bridewell, with a due acknowledgment of my obligation to him for it. He was not at all forward to receive it, so that I was fain to press it upon him.

While thus I remained in this family various suspicions arose in the minds of some concerning me with respect to Mary Penington’s fair daughter Guli; for she having now arrived at a marriageable age, and being in all respects a very desirable woman—whether regard was had to her outward person, which wanted nothing to render her completely comely; or to the endowments of her mind, which were every way extraordinary and highly obliging; or to her outward fortune, which was fair, and which with some hath not the last nor the least place in consideration—she was openly and secretly sought and solicited by many, and some of them almost of every rank and condition, good and bad, rich and poor, friend and foe. To whom, in their respective turns, till he at length came for whom she was reserved, she carried herself with so much evenness of temper, such courteous freedom, guarded with the strictest modesty, that as it gave encouragement or ground of hopes to none, so neither did it administer any matter of offence or just cause of complaint to any.