having
undertaken to fast forty days and
forty nights was in the morning
found dead. He was by jury found
guilty of his own death and buried
in the Castle yard.'_

_'Heard and true that Turner's
daughter was distract in the
Quaking business.'_

_'Sad are the fits at Coxall, like
the pow-wowing among the Indians.'_

_1660.--'The Quakers, after a stop
and a silence, seem to be swarming
and increased, and why, Lord thou
only knowest!'_

_'So there is no obtaining of Life
but through Death, nor no
obtaining the Crown but through
the Cross.'--JAMES PARNELL._

XVIII. THE FIRST QUAKER MARTYR

How Mrs. Benson managed it, there is no record. Perhaps she hardly
knew herself! But she was not a woman to be easily turned aside from
her purpose, and her husband, Colonel Gervase Benson, had been one of
the 'considerable people' in the County before he had turned Quaker
and 'downed those things.' Even after the change, it may be that
prison doors were more easily unlocked by certain little golden and
silver keys in those days, than they are in our own.

Anyway, somehow or other, the interview was arranged. 'Little James'
found his desire fulfilled at last. When he passed into the stifling,
crowded prison den, where human beings were herded together like
beasts, he never heeded the horrible stench or the crawling vermin
that abounded everywhere. Rather, he felt as if he were entering the
palace of a king. He paid no attention to the crowd of savage figures
all around him. He saw nothing, knew nothing, felt nothing, until at
last he found that his hand was lying in the grasp of a stronger,
firmer hand, that held it, and would not let it go. Then, indeed, for
the first time he looked up, and knew that his long journey was ended,
as he met the penetrating gaze of George Fox.

'Keep thine eyes off me, they pierce me,' the Baptist Deacon had
cried, a few weeks before, in that same city. As James looked up, he
too felt for the first time the piercing power of those eyes, but to
him it brought no terror, only joy, as he yielded himself wholly to
his teacher's scrutiny. In silence the two stood, reading each the
other's soul. James felt, instinctively, th