April 26. 1851. J 



NOTES AND QUEKIES. 



335 



QUAKERS ATTEMPT TO CONVERT THE POPE. 



(Vol. iii., p. 302.) 



I have never met with any satisfactory' account 

 of this singular Quaker aggression. Perhaps it 

 may be a contribution towards one if you can find 

 room for some notice of a tract ia my possession. 

 It is entitled, A Narrative of some of the Sufferings 

 of J. P. in the Ciitj of Rome. Loudon, printed for 

 Thomas Simmons, at the Bull and Mouth, near 

 Aldersgate, 1661, 4to., pp. 16. This narrative of 

 John Perrot's does nor, however, give any par- 

 ticulars respecting his going to Rome, or the pro- 

 ceedings which led to his captivity there, but 

 begins with the words — 



" When I was cast into Prison, because I loved the 

 souls of my enemies," &c. ; 



and after eight pages, chiefly occupied by inflated 

 description of his sorrows, from which one obtains 

 no facts, he tells us that God took pity on him, 

 " And raised up his little babe, my dear Brother Thomas 

 Hart, to set his tender soul nearer unto my sufferings, 

 and made him take my burdens on his back, and the 

 yoak of my tribulation on his neck, and made him sup 

 of my sore sorrows, and drink of the bleedings of my 

 grief,'— 



and so he goes on ; but we do not learn what 

 Thomas Hart did, e.Kcept that he comforted John 

 Perrot in his confinement. 



" i\loreover," he says, '• the everlasting mercies of 

 ray God did stir up the bowels of other two of his 

 tender babes, named in the tent Jane Stokes and 

 Charles Baylie, to come to visit me wildest I was as 

 forsaken of all men. " 



They persevered, he tells us, 



" in their pilgrimage until they arrived to Rome, where 

 C. B. offered his life to ransom me, and both of them 

 entered into captivity for the love which they bore to 

 my life." 



His Narrative (strictly speaking) contains no fur- 

 ther information, but that at the bottom of the 

 tenth page it is dated and signed, 



" Written in Rome Prison of Madmen. JOHN." 

 The remaining six pages of the pamphlet con- 

 sist of a letter from Cluirles Ba)die, giving an 

 account of his pilgrimage with Jane Stokes, from 

 Dover to Calais, Paris, Marseilles, Genoa, until 



" Arriving," he says, " safe at Rome, we were drawn 

 in our lives directly to the place where the dearly 

 beloved J. P. was, and coming to the prison door, I 

 enquired for him, and having answer of his being there, 

 I desired for to speak with him, but it would not be 

 permitted us ; .So it was said in me, If^ritc unlo him, 

 which I did, the wliich l\e answered us in the fulness 

 of love, which refreshed us after our weary steps ; For 

 our souls were refreshed one in another, tliough one 

 another's faces we had never seen to the outward, and 

 then we being kept iji a holy fear not to do nor act one 

 way nor other, but as we were moved of the Lord, least 

 we should add to his bonds, — I say, being thus kept, 



we were delivered out of the snare of the fowler, who 

 secretly lay in wait to betray our innocency ; And after 

 a little time the Lord showed me I should go to the 

 inquisition, which I did, and enquired for the Inquisi- 

 tor, as I was showed of the Lord 1 should do; and 

 when I spoke to him I told hl:n / was come frum 

 Etir/land for to seemT/brothcrJ. P. ; to which heanswered, 

 / shou'd see him, and appointed me to come to a certain 

 place called Minerva, and there, saith he, / wilt procure 

 you the liberfy of the Cardinalls to see him ; he had me 

 also to the Inquisition office, where he asked many 

 questions of me concerning our religion, to which I 

 answered in the simplicity of my heart in the fear of the 

 Lord ; and at the appointed time I came to the place 

 aforesaid, and there I was showed what further I should 

 do, which was to tender my body for my brother ; and 

 so from that time I hardly missed opportunity to speak 

 to them as often as they met : for their manner was 

 thus to meet twice a-week, the one time at Minerva, 

 and the other time at Monle- Cuvallo, where the Pope's 

 own dwelling is, where I also did the like, more than 

 once, which stirred them up against me, in great 

 enmity," Sec. 



I am afraid I am trespassing on your overfilled 

 columns ; but — omitting his account of his going to 

 the Jews' synagogue, and of the command which 

 he received to fast twenty days as a testimony 

 against those who falsely stated that John LulFe 

 had fasted nineteen days and died on the twentieth 

 — omitting this, I must give one more extract. 

 Having been detained in one of his visits to the 

 Minerva, he says : 



" From thence I was carried to the Inquisition, where 

 I was shut up close, and after I had been there 3 dayes 

 the Lord said to me, T/iou must go to the Pazzarella, 

 which was the Prison or Hospital of mad men, where 

 our dear brother was prisoner ; and it was also said 

 unto me. Thou shalt also speak to the Pope ; And at the 

 17 dayes end, I was led from the Inquisition towards 

 the other prison, and by the way I met the Pope 

 carried in great pomp ; as it was the good will of the 

 Lord that I should speak unto him, men could not 

 prevent it, for I met him towards the foot of a bridge, 

 where I was something nigh him, and when he came 

 against me, the people being on their knees on each 

 side of him, I cried to him with a loud voice in the 

 Italian tongue, To do the thing that ivas Just, and to 

 release tli-i Innocent ; and wildest I was speaking, the 

 man which led me had not power to take me away until 

 I had done, and then he had me to prison where my 

 endeared brother was, where I fasted abjut 20 dayes 

 as a witness against tiiat bloody generation," &c. 



As to how they got out, he only says : 



" Soon after my fast, the Lord, by an outstretched arm, 

 wrought our deliverance, being condemned to perpetual 

 galley-slavery, if ever we returned again unto Rome." 



It appears, however, that though thus prevented 

 from exercising his office of a missionary in Rome, 

 Charles Haylie did not relinquish it. In tiie letter 

 just ({uoted he informs his correspondent (who 

 this was does not appear), that since he had seen his 

 face, he had been several times (as he was while 



