chased out of the great town, and forced to flit to and fro in the
open country. The Friends, meanwhile, increased on both sides of the
river Tyne. In 1657 George Whitehead visited Newcastle, and was kindly
received in the house of one John Dove, who had been a Lieutenant in
the army before he became a Friend.

Whitehead, himself one of the 'Valiant Sixty,' writes:--'The Mayor of
the town (influenced by the priests), would not suffer us to keep any
meeting within the Liberty of the Town, though in Gate-side (being out
of the Mayor's Liberty), our Friends had settled a meeting at our
beloved Friend Richard Ubank's house.... The first meeting we then
endeavoured to have within the town of Newcastle was in a large room
taken on purpose by some Friends.... The meeting was not fully
gathered when the Mayor of the Town and his Officers came, and by
force turned us out of the meeting; and not only so, but out of the
Town also; for the Mayor and his Company commanded us and went along
with us as far as the Bridge over the river Tine that parts Newcastle
and Gates-head, upon which Bridge there is a Blew Stone to which the
Mayor's Liberty extends; when we came to the stone, the Mayor gave his
charge to each of us in these words: "I charge and command you in the
name of His Highness the Lord Protector. That you come no more into
Newcastle to have any more meetings there at your peril.'"

The Friends, therefore, continued to meet at the place that is called
Gateside (though some say that Goat's head was the name of it at
first), and there they remained till, after divers persecutions, they
were at length suffered to assemble within the walls of Newcastle
itself, upon the north side of the 'Blew Stone' above the River Tyne.
Here, in 1698, they bought a plot of ground, within a stone's-throw of
St. Nicholas, facing towards the street that the townsmen call Pilgrim
Street, since thither in olden days did many weary pilgrims wend their
way, seeking to come unto the Mound of Jesu on the outskirts of the
town. And that same Mound of Jesu is now called by men, Jesu Mond, or
shorter, Jesmond, and no longer is it the resort of pilgrims, but
rather of merchants and pleasure seekers. Yet still beside the Pilgrim
Street stands the Meeting-House built by those other pilgrim souls,
those Quakers, whom the men of the town in scorn called 'butterflies.'
And there, so far from flitting over the fells, they have continued to
hold their Meetings and