u mayst well say so," quoth Roberts, "for I can't tune after thy
pipe."

The inferior clergy were by no means so lenient as the Bishop. They
regarded Roberts as the ringleader of Dissent, an impracticable,
obstinate, contumacious heretic, not only refusing to pay them tithes
himself, but encouraging others to the same course. Hence, they thought
it necessary to visit upon him the full rigor of the law. His crops were
taken from his field, and his cattle from his yard. He was often
committed to the jail, where, on one occasion, he was kept, with many
others, for a long time, through the malice of the jailer, who refused to
put the names of his prisoners in the Calendar, that they might have a
hearing. But the spirit of the old Commonwealth's man remained
steadfast. When Justice George, at the Ram in Cirencester, told him he
must conform, and go to church, or suffer the penalty of the law, he
replied that he had heard indeed that some were formerly whipped out of
the Temple, but he had never heard of any being whipped in. The Justice,
pointing, through the open window of the inn, at the church tower, asked
him what that was. "Thou mayst call it a daw-house," answered the
incorrigible Quaker. "Dost thou not see how the jackdaws flock about
it?"

Sometimes it happened that the clergyman was also a magistrate, and
united in his own person the authority of the State and the zeal of the
Church. Justice Parsons, of Gloucester, was a functionary of this sort.
He wielded the sword of the Spirit on the Sabbath against Dissenters, and
on week days belabored them with the arm of flesh and the constable's
staff. At one time he had between forty and fifty of them locked up in
Gloucester Castle, among them Roberts and his sons, on the charge of
attending conventicles. But the troublesome prisoners baffled his
vigilance, and turned their prison into a meeting-house, and held their
conventicles in defiance of him. The Reverend Justice pounced upon them
on one occasion, with his attendants. An old, gray-haired man, formerly
a strolling fencing-master, was preaching when he came in. The Justice
laid hold of him by his white locks, and strove to pull him down, but the
tall fencing-raster stood firm and spoke on; he then tried to gag him,
but failed in that also. He demanded the names of the prisoners, but no
one answered him. A voice (we fancy it was that of our old friend
Roberts) called out: "The Devil must be hard put t