oberts, and complained that he had dealt hardly with him, in telling
him, before so many gentlemen, that he had sought to betray him by
professions of friendship, in order to send him to prison; and that,
if he had not done as he did, people would have reported him as an
encourager of the Quakers. "But now, John," said the good prelate, "I'll
burn the warrant against you before your face." "You know, Mr. Burnet,"
he continued, addressing his attendant, "that a Ring of Bells may be made
of excellent metal, but they may be out of tune; so we may say of John:
he is a man of as good metal as I ever met with, but quite out of tune."

"Thou 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 pri