'Little Elizabeth Fletcher' was then only seventeen,
'a modest, grave, young woman.' Jane Waugh, one of the 'convinced'
serving-maids at Cammsgill, was a friend of hers; but Jane Waugh's
turn for suffering had not yet come. She was still in the North when
the two Elizabeths reached Oxford. This is the account of what befell
them there: 'The 20th day of the 4th month [June] 1654 came to this
city two maids, who went through the streets and into the Colleges,
steeple and tower houses, preaching repentance and declaring the word
of the Lord to the people.... On the 25th day of the same month they
were moved to go to Martin's Mass House (_alias_) Carefox, where one
of those maids, after the priest had done, spake something in answer
to what the priest had before spoken in exhortation to the people, and
presently were by two Justices sent to prison.' The Mayor of Oxford
seems to have been pleased with the behaviour of the two girls and
caused them to be set at liberty again. But the Vice-Chancellor and
the Justices would not agree to this, and 'earnestly enquired from
whence they came, and their business to Oxford. They answered, "they
were commanded of the Lord to come"; and it being demanded "what to
do," they answered, to "declare against Sin and Ungodliness, which
they lived in." And at this answer the Vice-Chancellor and the
Justices ordered their punishment, to be whipped out of town, and
demanding of the Mayor to agree to the same, and for refusing, said
they would do it of themselves, and signing a paper, the contents
whereof was this: To be severely whipped, and sent out of Town as
Vagrants. And forthwith, because of the tumult, they were put into the
Cage, a place common for the worst of people; and accordingly the next
morning, they were whipped, and sent away, and on the backside of the
City, meeting some scholars, they were moved to speak to them, who
fell on them very violently, and drew them into John's College, where
they tied them back to back and pumped water on them, until they were
almost stifled; and they being met at another time as they passed
through a Graveyard, where a corpse was to be buried, Elizabeth Holme
spake something to the Priest and people, and one Ann Andrews thrust
her over a grave stone, which hurt she felt near to her dying day.'

Two other women, Elizabeth Williams and a certain Mary Fisher (who was
hereafter to go on a Mission to no less a person than the Grand Turk),
were also crue