clean birds." This speech so rankled in the minds of the wild young college lads, that even five or six years after, they sufficiently proved the truth of her description by throwing dirt and stones at any Quakers who passed them in the street; bursting into the meetings "like wild horses"; and throwing mud and stones at the preachers, or tearing off the women's head-gear with unwarrantable and unmannerly rudeness, unreproved even by the proctor or senior Fellows, who sometimes were witnesses. The very year after this, in 1655, when George Fox rode through the turbulent crowd of young men, who, he says, were there to be apprenticed to their trade of preaching, his comment on their manners is that carters and coalers could never be ruder." Had it not been for the friendly twilight and the protection of the new Mayor, who took him to his own house, Fox says he would be like to have needed no supper, for the scholars would have made a supper of him. To Cambridge, then, James pluckily proceeded, "to see what the Lord had for me to do and he that called me went along with me." He soon heard that at least one Friend, Ann Blakely, wife of a justice of the peace for Cam bridgeshire, was in prison, and he set to work in the surest way to become a companion in bonds. Like all these first Quakers, men and women too, he was absolutely regardless of personal safety, comfort or convenience. Within a fortnight after his arrival in the University town, this young reformer had launched two papers, probably printed broadsides, against the "corruption" of magistrates and of priests, which he proceeded to "set up " in the market-place of Cambridge, upon market day, the busiest in all the week. They were not aimed particularly against Cambridge magistrates or priests, but against "corrupt ones wheresoever they are." Now, in the interests of decency and order, such rank heresy on the part of an unknown youth could not be suffered, and on 4th July he was ordered off to gaol by William Pickering, the Mayor. Pending an inquiry, this was, of course, fair enough, but magistrates when they found no precise breach of any law, were apt to let an unfortunate prisoner lie forgotten from sessions to sessions. In his reply to the mittimus, Parnell, who had ever a ready answer, says he was "bound to good behaviour by a stronger bond than man can make, before ever he came to Cambridge." The Mayor was still further incensed by the arrival of other Friends, and at the end of August, Richard Hubberthorn became Parnell's companion in gaol. For six months-" two sessions"-Parnell was kept in confinement, tossed, he says, from prison to dungeon, because no actual breach of any law could be proved against him. At last, a jury was summoned to say that the papers he had issued were I seditious and scandalous." The twelve true men, after two hours' deliberation, declared by their foreman that they could find nothing save that the papers were written by James Parnell. And this was quite absurd, for as the accused youth says, he had openly owned them in court, and moreover there was his name upon them, to testify to the same. So, after three days, he was allowed to go away, with a pass describing him as a rogue and vagabond. But his exit from the town where learning and good manners were intended to be taught, was attended by a furious mob, armed with clubs and staves. In the commotion, he was unable to study the paper until he had shaken off his unwelcome |