The Ancestry of I''r(in<'is Gallon. 35 



John Braine, b. 24/5/1684 ; Mary Braine (b. ? ), dau. 



of John and Margaret Braine, late of Ratclift'e, Stepney, 



married 11/7/1707 John Midford of London. 



The sons we have not been able to trace further. It is noteworthy 



that Robert Barclay of Ury must have married Elizabeth Braine when 



his brother David was only 14 years of age, and accordingly it is 



unlikely that David was the link which brought Robert to seek a wife 



in commercial circles in East London. His father, the Apologist, made 



several visits to London, and was in touch with Friends in London ; 



one of these visits in April, 1683, was to place his son Robert at school 



in Theobalds, 12 miles from London ; or the link with the Braines may 



have been through the latter's maternal grandfather, the merchant 



Mollison 1 of Aberdeen, who would probably have business connections 



with Wapping, then almost the port of London. 



Another strenuous Quaker was Jaspar Batt. He came originally 

 from Street in Somersetshire, and must have been among the earliest 

 converts to the doctrines of George Fox. As early as 1657 he had his 

 goods seized, and in the same year he was fined for refusing to take an 

 oath. In 1660 he was sent to prison ; in 1663 we find him in Ilchester 

 gaol, from which he wrote a letter with Matthew Perin, who was 

 his daughter Edith Batt's second husband. In 1667 Batt was im- 

 prisoned in Taunton Castle; in 1678 others were fined for listening 

 to his preaching. In 1683 he was arrested for preaching, and later in 

 the same year he was again seized and put in prison. In a letter to 

 George Fox, 1683, he describes how his " dear wife " and he lay on the 

 boards of the floor because they cannot " with safety receive or keep 

 any goods or bedding in our house," owing to repeated distraints. In 

 1684 he was again before the court ; in 1685 he was in trouble about 

 tithes, and in 1686 we learn that he had already spent 2 years 4 months 

 and 1 9 days in gaol for his conscience' sake. It might be supposed that 

 Edith Batt's experience of her father's difficulties might have prevented 

 her selecting a mate of like stubbornness ! On the contrary she found 

 in Robert Button a husband who had spent no less than eight years of 

 his previous life (1664 1672) in gaol for conscience' sake 2 . 



1 Gilbert Mollison was brother to the famous Colonel Mollison, who signalised 

 himself in the defence of Candia besieged by the Turks. 



2 Besse's Sufferings of the People called Quakers, Vol. n, pp. 424. He was dis- 

 charged from the county gaol for Wiltshire in 1672 with Walter Penn. 



52 



