ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



able number were formerly to be found in Dorset."' The sect of the Society 

 of Friends, which sprang up towards the middle of the century and to whom 

 the term Quaker was first applied in 1650/^" appears to have suffered equally 

 under the regime of the Parliament and the Acts passed on the Restoration.*^' 

 The tenets of their persuasion, their refusal to pay tithes or to be chargeable 

 for the rates and assessments of churches whose worship they disapproved, 

 exposed them to much contempt and dislike, while their objection to taking 

 an oath in a court of justice or to remove their hats seems to have been 

 universally misunderstood. In Dorset, between 1650 and 1660, some fifty-six 

 names are recorded of those committed to prison, and sixty-six from 1660 

 onwards ; '"^ there is evidence of meeting houses at Bridport, Dorchester, 

 Hawkchurch, Sherborne, Evershot, Corfe, South Perrott, Poole. At the 

 beginning it must be admitted many convictions were due not only to 

 adherence to the above unpopular views, but also to ' speaking to the people 

 in the steeple-house,' or ' declaring truth,' &c. Thus 



on 1 6th of the 9th month (1656) Jasper Bett being at the steeple-house in Weymouth 

 (Melcombe Regis) when the Priest had clone asked him whether he was a ?ninister of Christ ? 

 The Priest answered / am, and went away ; but the People fell violently upon Jasper 

 beating and abusing him sorely and then hailed him to prison where he lay several days.'-^ 



As persecutions became severer these officious testimonies to the ' truth ' were 

 dropped, offenders were ' set in the stockes,' ^"* several on their way to 

 attend meetings were ' whipped and put outside the town under pretence that 

 they were vagabonds.' ^~' In 1657 six were committed to gaol for ' uncourtly 

 behaviour before the justices,' i.e. refusing to uncover.*^' Quaker meetings 

 were always subject to interruption, and those attending them to insult, even 

 in the open street.^" An Act was passed in 1661 with special reference to 

 their refusal to take an oath,'"' and the following year it is stated there were 

 about 200 Quakers imprisoned in Dorset for wearing their hats in court, 

 not swearing, and opening their shops on 29 May and 12 June, days appointed 

 to be observed as a fast for fine weather. '*-" 



Non-juring at the close of the century seems to have confined itself mostly 

 to the Roman Catholics, or ' popish recusants ' as they were still called,^'*" who, 

 after the 'Unnatural Rebellion' of 17 15, were obliged to register their names 

 and estates. The return furnished of those ' Roman Catholic Nonjurors and 

 others in Dorset, who refused to take the oaths to king George ' gives fifty- 



'" In response to an inquiry in the Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries as to Dorset Quaker burial grounds 

 a list is there given (i, 1 53) showing their existence at Bridport, Cerne, Corfe, Dorchester, Hawkchurch, 

 Lyme Regis, Marnhull, Poole, Ryme Intrinseca, Shaftesbury, Sherborne, and Weymouth. 



^'° The year succeeding the imprisonment of George Fox at Nottingham. 



'*' Besse, Abstract of Sufferings of the Quakers, i, Introd. vi, vii, viii, ix. 



"» Ibid. 530-1 ; ii, 463-4. "3 Ibid, i, 75. '-'' Ibid. 77. 



'« Ibid. "« Ibid. 79. 



'=' Ibid. 80-81. ^'» Ibid, ii, Pref pp. xi-xv. 



*" Cal. S.P. Dom. 1661-2, p. 426. Persecutions did not cease till the passing of the Act of Toleration, 

 1689, and members of this sect continued to be presented at the assizes at Dorchester for adherence to their 

 opinions. 'A powerful factor,' says Bejse, ' in granting warrants for distresses in 1674 for holding meetings, 

 amounting to ^^97 9/. lod. was Justice Culliford, who much transgressed the Bounds of his office in kicking 

 Deborah Coleman an innocent woman on her Belly and other parts of her Body and striking her with his Dog- 

 whip ' ; Collections of Sufferings of Quakers, i, 1 70. 



"" Oberton's list of clerical and lay non-jurors who refused to take the o.ith of allegiance to William and 

 Mary in 1689 and again in I 70 1-2 and 1 7 14, only gives the name of one clergyman in the Bristol diocese 

 who can be claimed for Dorset : W. Flud, Fludd, or Flood, vicar of Halstock ; The Nonjurors, 478. 



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