that insolent" [Rigby] that he should have neither her person,
goods, nor house; and as to his grenadoes, she would find a more
merciful fire, and, if the providence of God did not order otherwise,
that her house, her goods, her children, and her soldiers would
perish in flames of their own lighting, and so she and her family and
defenders would seal their religion and loyalty. The next morning the
countess caused a sally of her forces to be made, in which they got
possession of the ditch and rampart and a very destructive mortar
which had been used to bombard the besieged. Rigby wrote to his
superiors, begging assistance and saying that the length of the siege
and the hard duties it entailed had wearied all his soldiers, and
that he himself was completely worn out. In the meanwhile, the Earl
of Derby and Prince Rupert made their appearance, and Rigby made a
hurried retreat; in his endeavor to escape the Royalist forces, he
fell into an ambush and received a severe punishment before he reached
the town of Bolton. Such were the deeds of women of spirit upon each
side of the civil conflict; and because of their elements of character
and loyalty to conviction, the women of the better classes of England,
irrespective of their affiliations, mark a high point of progress in
the sex toward the goal of independence and individuality which the
civil strife aided them to secure.

The Society of Friends, or Quakers, was one of the religious
communities of the Commonwealth, whose members suffered grievously on
account of their religion. To the lot of their women fell an abundant
share of persecutions and martyrdoms; they were scourged, and ill
treated in every conceivable way. Their lives, inoffensive and pure,
were a constant rebuke to those of the loose livers about them.
Although Charles II. had promised, on coming to the throne, that
he would befriend them, their miseries were not greatly abated. The
persecution of Quaker women had continued from the middle of the
sixteenth century, when, in the west of England, Barbara Blangdon was
imprisoned for preaching, and other Quakeresses were placed in
the stocks by the Mayor of Evansham, and also treated with other
indignities. Throughout the seventeenth century, cruel persecutions of
women of the Quaker persuasion were often repeated.

With the Friends, the idea of the ministry of the Gospel was broadened
so as to include in its preachers and teachers those who possessed
the necess