resent, three of the most
eminent London physicians, Dr. Wright, Dr. Cox, and Dr. Bates, were
instructed "to visit James Nayler, prisoner in Bridewell, and to
consider of his condition as to the state both of his mind and body
in point of health"; and, from that date (July 16, 1657), his farther
detention seems to have been merely for his cure. George Fox, whose
circuits of preaching took him as far as Edinburgh and the Scottish
Highlands, could never be in London without addressing a pious letter
or two to Cromwell, or even going to see him; and another Quaker,
Edward Burrough, was so drawn to Cromwell that he was continually
penning letters to him and leaving them at Whitehall. During and
after the Kingship question these letters were particularly frequent,
the Quakers being all _Contrariants_ on that point. "O
Protector, who hast tasted of the power of God, which many
generations before thee have not so much since the days of apostasy
from the Apostles, take heed that thou lose not thy power; but keep
Kingship off thy head, which the world would give to thee:" so had
Fox written in one letter, ending, "O Oliver, take heed of undoing
thyself by running into things that will fade, the things of this
world that will change; be subject and obedient to the Lord God."
There was something in all this that really reached Cromwell's heart,
while it amused him; and, though he would begin by bantering Fox at
an interview, sitting on a table and talking in "a light manner," as
Fox himself tells us, he would end with some serious words. Both to
Fox personally, and to the letters from him and other Quakers, his
reply in substance uniformly was that they were good people, and
that, for himself, "all persecution and cruelty was against his
mind." Cromwell was only at the centre, however, and could not
regulate the administration of the law everywhere.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of date; and Sewel's _History of
the Quakers_, I. 210-233.]

John Lilburne once more, but now for the last time, and in a totally
new guise! Committed to prison in 1653 by the government of the
Barebones Parliament, acting avowedly not by law but simply "for the
peace of this nation" (ante, IV. 508), he had been first in the
Tower, then in a castle in Jersey, and then in Dover Castle. In this
last confinement, which had been made tolerably easy, a Quaker had
had access to him, with very marked effects. "Here, in Dover Castle,"
Lilburne had writte