Persecutions of the Seventeerdh Century. 271 



Clement, on or about May -JOth, 1660, was complacently viewing 

 his acquired property, he suddenly heard the bells of St. John's, 

 Devizes, strike out a merry peal, and then quickly disappeared from 

 Potterne, and was never afterwards seen there. Those joyous sounds 

 told him that England was welcoming her king back again, and 

 that Gregory Clement had certainly lost his money, and most 

 probably his credit also. 



The " Tryers " appointed by the Commonwealth came round in 

 due course, about 1649, when John Northey was Vicar of Potterne, 

 to test the efficiency of the various parochial ministers, and then many 

 an one being judged to be inefficient and " no godly man or sufficient 

 preacher/' was superseded by another, who though he might have 

 had a more fluent tongue had probably a far less sensitive conscience. 

 But John Northey, for aught I have been able to learn, lived on 

 undisturbed through all the troublous times of the Commonwealth. 

 His contemporary at Devizes, one " Master John Shepherd,'' was 

 roughly handled, and as it would appear, unfairly accused by some 

 of the Parliamentary generals or officers.' 



A word in passing must also be said of the persecution that was 

 carried on against a class of religionists, who, as we think, from their 

 quiet and inoffensive ways, might have hoped for immunity. These 

 were the Quakers, who, as we know, flourished much in this vicinity. 

 Mr. Waylen ^ gives us many details of the proceedings taken against 

 them, and the fines and imprisonment inflicted on them.. The amusing 

 part too in the legal arrangements of those days was this, that 

 these inoffensive Quakers were condemned under a law which dealt 

 with them as " reputed Papists " or " Popish recusants ! " Of those 

 immediately from Potterne who were thus persecuted, we hear (in 

 1678) of Roger Wheeler, a blacksmith of Potterne,^ and Richard 

 Joyner of Worton; and in 1683, Mary and Martha Underwood 

 of Potterne, were informed against as Quakers and condemned to 

 eight weeks' imprisonment. The spirit o£ persecution is the same 



1 See Wilts Ma^., ii., 329, 

 ^.Waylen's, Devizes, 343. 

 8 Ibid, 346. 



