lly flogged at Cambridge for daring to 'publish Truth'
there. 'The Mayor ... issued his warrant to the Constable to whip them
at the Market Cross till the blood ran down their bodies; and ordered
three of his sergeants to see that sentence, equally cruel and
lawless, severely executed. The poor women kneeling down, in Christian
meekness besought the Lord to forgive him, for that he knew not what
he did: so they were led to the Market Cross, calling upon God to
strengthen their Faith. The Executioner commanded them to put off
their clothes, which they refused. Then he stripped them naked to the
waist, put their arms into the whipping-post, and executed the Mayor's
warrant far more cruelly than is usually done to the worst of
malefactors, so that their flesh was miserably cut and torn. The
constancy and patience which they expressed under this barbarous usage
was astonishing to the beholders, for they endured the cruel torture
without the least change of countenance or appearance of uneasiness,
and in the midst of their punishment sang and rejoiced, saying, "The
Lord be blessed, the Lord be praised, who hath thus honoured us and
strengthened us to suffer for his Name's sake." ... As they were led
back into the town they exhorted the people to fear God, not man,
telling them "this was but the beginning of the sufferings of the
people of God."'[20]

These two women were the first Friends to be publicly whipped in
England. But their prophecy that 'this was but the beginning' was only
too literally fulfilled.

Not only had bodily sufferings to be undergone by these brave 'First
Publishers.' Malicious reports were also spread against them, which
must have been almost harder to bear.

William Prynne, the same William Prynne who had had his own ears
cropped in earlier days by order of the Star Chamber, but who had not,
apparently, learned charity to others through his own sufferings,
published a pamphlet that was spread abroad throughout England. It
was called 'The Quakers unmasked, and clearly detected to be but the
Spawn of Romish Frogs, Jesuits and Franciscan Friars, sent from Rome
to seduce the intoxicated giddy-headed English Nation.' George Fox
called the pamphlet in which he answered this charge by an almost
equally uncharitable title: 'The Unmasking and Discovery of
Antichrist, with all the false Prophets, by the true Light which comes
from Christ Jesus.'

The seventeenth century has truly been called 'a very ill-ma