and chains, to which the unfortunate prisoners were attached. A worse instrument of torture, called the press, appears in one. Light can scarcely penetrate through narrow, wedgeshaped slits in walls which are at least ten feet thick. Air is only admitted through the grated doorway that opens on to the inner court, now roofless, but then stifling and darkened by an upper floor.

Our prisoner was forbidden to take exercise on the walls or in the yard of the castle, although this was earnestly craved. On one occasion his plea for air was met by the gaoler locking him outside his cell all night in a close, narrow passage. The photograph opposite shows the walk upon the summit of the Castle wall, leading to the North-West tower; the doorway leads to the cell where Parnell was later on confined.

The embargo which prevented his friends' access to him must have been partially removed before many weeks. George Whitehead, then a young man, afterwards a pillar of the church, came, as we have seen. Although with a grudging consent on the part of the gaoler, Fox also succeeded in seeing him during the late summer or autumn.

It is difficult to fix the exact time, but it was probably late in July, or early in the month of August, that George Fox had arrived in Essex, and had a "glorious meeting" of 2,000 persons at Coggeshall, as he relates in his Journal. Parnell's preaching and arrest there had profoundly stirred the inhabitants, and Fox was ready as ever to follow up the impression. No doubt the direction of his steps toward Essex at this precise time, was the result of his hearing in London, where he had passed part of the summer, of the state of affairs in the county, and of James Parnell's reception.

He arrived in Colchester on the Friday following his Coggeshall meeting, and that day spoke to a large gathering held “near," perhaps at Copford, or Stanway. On Sunday, he had another meeting, still larger. The audience, he tells us, were "turned to Christ's free teaching and received it gladly, for many of them were of the stock of the martyrs."

Fox succeeded in seeing the imprisoned lad, though he was not allowed to stay long in converse with him. Since the two last met,

the younger man had

passed through deep and

ripening experiences. No doubt his reverence

and admiration for his friend were as great, or greater than ever, but he had gained a strength and self-reliance of his own. "Very cruel they were to him," Fox says in his Journal. The gaoler's wife was unreasonable and immoderate, and "threatened to have his blood," though she was not averse to making money out of him, and demanded exorbitant bribes before admitting those who came from Cambridge and London to see him. Some she received with vile language and indecent practical jokes, and sent them away without vouchsafing them a glimpse of their poor young friend. Then an order was stuck up on the door of his room, saying that every one who wished to see him must spend 4d. in beer. Such petty devices were possible.

At Christmas time, he was removed from the small room for which he had paid fourpence a night, to a hole in the castle wall in the southwest tower, some twelve feet above the ground, to which access could only be had by a short ladder reaching but half this height. A piece of rope was provided, by which the prisoner was expected to lower himself till he reached the ladder, when he had to descend for his food.

In this miserable place, without air, or any but the dimmest light, with no possible means of fire or warmth, the poor youth grew ill and sickly, his legs, for want of the much coveted exercise, became numb and useless, and he was soon incapable of performing the daily task-an acrobatic feat even for a sound lad-of descending many feet by a rope to fetch up his food. A basket, fixed upon the end of a cord for him to let down, was supplied by his anxious friends, who must have been heart-broken at seeing him thus gradually sicken and fade away. It was little enough they could do, but even this was refused, and the kind provision was banished. He must either famish in the hole, or drag his stiffening, useless limbs down this perilous descent at the gaoler's pleasure.

One day, the descent had been safely accomplished, and, clutching his bread in one hand, he was climbing the ladder, groping unsteadily for the short dangling rope, when his feeble, nerveless grasp missed it, and, overbalancing, he fell from the top of the ladder upon the hard, cold stones of the dungeon. There he lay unconscious for some time, and when at last the gaoler went his rounds again, he was taken up

for dead. Seeing him to be now unequal to such athletic exercises, the prison keeper mercifully deposited him in a lower and more accessible spot; another hole in the thick castle wall, which, from its shape and size, had acquired the title of the Oven. "Some baker's ovens," says one of the narrators, "have been seen bigger than this, though not so high." But there was no crevice whereby light and air might enter, or smoke escape. Winter had set in with severity, and a charcoal burner— probably one of those that the Dutch housewife carries about with her, and that are placed before every seat in the churches, was provided by the thoughtful friends. Again this simple necessary was churlishly denied, while even the food supplied by the outside sympathisers was distributed by the gaoler's wife among other prisoners, and never reached the delicate youth for whom it was intended.

Chief among Parnell's benefactors were two wealthy merchants, Thomas Talcot and Edward Grant; his early friends, Thomas Shortland and his wife, who occupied a more humble position in life, were still more practical in their ministrations. Mrs. Shortland came day by day