A HISTORY OF NORFOLK a great convincement there was. . . . We came to Yarmouth and there stayed awhile ; where there was a friend, Thomas Bond, in prison for the truth of Christ. There we had some service, and some were turned to the Lord in that town. . . . Another meeting in a town about five miles from there : there were some friendly people in the town ; and we had a tender, broken meeting amongst them, in the Lord's power, to his praise. The 'Journal describes the difficulties encountered and overcome by George Fox on leaving this place, in a manner which bears testimony to the sweetness of temper which bore down so many obstacles. He had intended to ride to Lynn next morning, but was carried off from the inn where he spent the night by the constable and a rabble. Their intention had been to convey him before some Independent justices, whom he had offended in a disputation he had held with them after they had been introduced to him by Captain Lawrence, and whose ire had also been roused by the success of his meeting at Captain Lawrence's house. But they had to take him before a justice who was not an Independent, and he and his companions were released and went on to Lynn, which was then a garrison. Here they had a friend in Joseph Face, an ensign, and wished him to get a meeting together of the captain and officers and as many of the people of the town as feared God. ' We had a very glorious meeting among them, and turned many to the spirit of God.' Next day they got Joseph Face to have the gates opened for them by three in the morning, and rode 40 miles that day. He tells how he was again in Norfolk in 1659, visiting Friends^ till I came to Norwich, where we had a meeting about Christmas-time. The Mayor, having got notice of the same, had granted a warrant to apprehend me. I went to reason with the Mayor, and told him we were peaceable people, so he became moderate, and did not send his officers to the meeting. A large one it was, and abundance of rude people came, with intent to do mischief: but the Lord's power came over them so that they were chained by it, though several priests were there and professors and ranters. Thence to Colonel Dennis's where we had a great meeting. Norfolk became a great Quaker centre, but for many years to come persecution and transportation were the lot of the Friends. King James's order of 25 July, 1688, for the admission of thirty Quakers as freemen of Norwich without taking the oaths, was met by the Council with a refusal, thirty-nine voting against their admission and only eight for it. Men had still much to learn and a long way to travel before arriving at the point reached when in 1846, at the sudden death of Joseph John Gurney, a man distinguished not only by the munificence with which he promoted all public and private charities in his own city of Norwich and for the zeal with which he and his sister, Mrs. Fry, encouraged philanthropic and religious movements in the world at large, but also for his eminent position in the Society of Friends, Bishop Stanley preached his funeral sermon, the bells of Norwich Cathedral tolled his funeral knell, and the burial service of the chief of English Quakers was virtually celebrated in the cathedral itself.' The petition* of the inhabitants of the Close, Christchurch parish, Norwich, for a lease of the late cathedral to trustees with licence to receive ' Journal, i, 451. ' Blomefield, iii, 424. ' A. P. Stanley, Life of Edward Stanley, Bp. of Norwich, 78. * Cal. S. P. Dom. 1657-8, p. 372. 296
