A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



It was attended bv a great number and was dominated by a Captain Crook, 

 ' a Ju^tice of the Peace under Cromwell ... of dangerous principles, a 

 subtle fellow and one who hath too much influence upon the people ot that 

 Town and the country about.' '' A meeting was also said to be held every 

 Sunday and Wednesday at a house hired for the purpose at St. Albans," 

 and at this Crook also attended. At Redbourn meetings were held in the 

 houses of William Barber, gent., and Thomas Bigge, yeoman, and were 

 sometimes attended by 200 or 300 persons. Crook had also followers at 

 Norton, and at Shephall a small meeting was held at the house of Daniel 

 Mardell, a smith.'' At about this time there were seventeen ' established 

 and settled meetings within the County of Hertford of the People of God 

 there,' ^^ and comparatively few of these seem to have been disturbed.' 

 Public opinion, indeed, seems to have been against the persecution, ' and 

 when the Quaker Act was renewed in 1670 the penalties of transportation 

 and imprisonment were superseded by fines.' 



Owing to the peculiar tenets of the Quakers they were liable to be 

 charged under a number of Acts for offences not strictly ecclesiastical in 

 character, as well as for non-attendance at the parish church. The charge 

 most commonly brought forward was under the statutes which made it an 

 offence punishable as praemunire for any person over the age of eighteen to 

 refuse to take the oath of allegiance.* The Restoration was followed by a 

 number of prosecutions under this Act, as many as nine Quakers being sent 

 to gaol on one day for refusing the oath.' If a prosecution under another 

 Act failed it was no uncommon thing for the justices to tender the oath 

 which the Quaker's principles made it impossible for him to take." In this 

 way Henry Sweeting and three other Hertford men were outlawed in 1662 ; 

 they were, however, sent back to Hertford Gaol, but after thirty-one weeks' 

 imprisonment they obtained a royal pardon.' The Toleration Act provided 

 that those who scrupled to take the oath of allegiance should subscribe to its 

 terms," and from this time the collection of tithes alone gave an opening fbr 

 the vexing of the Quaker. From the first the objection to the payment of 

 tithes and church dues had been one of the most difficult of the Friends' 

 principles to reconcile with law and custom. The trial of one who refused 

 payment lav in the ecclesiastical courts, and under a Tudor statute" the judge 



^^ Turner, Orig. Rec. of Early ycnri' i, S4-5. Crook died at Hertford in 1699, aged eighty-one 

 (Urwic:., op. cit. 536). 



"' The Quaker burial-ground still exists in \'ictoria Street, St. Albans. "" Turner, op. cit. i, 92. 



'^^ Friends' Hist. Soc. ]:ur':. viii. III. They were : I. Hertford ; z. Ware ; 3. Widford, Sawbridge- 

 worth, Hertford ; 4. Royston ; 5. Rushden (Ryston), Sandon, Cottered and Buntingford ; 6. Ashwell ; 

 -- Baldock ; S. Hitchin ; 9. Shephall and Stevenage, Langley, Rabble Heath ' in Stevenage Welling parish ' ; 

 ic. Sacombe ; I I. ' Bendick,' Lilley ; 12. St. Albans ; I 3. ' Sxpiide ' ; l+. Cheshunt, Broxbourne ; I 5. Mark- 

 v.ue Street, Redbourn, Gaddesden ; 16. N'jrthchurch, Tring ; 17. Hoddesdon. The list is from the earliest 

 Quarterlv Meeting Minute Book, but the exact date is unknown. 



' Meeting? were disturbed at Baldock in 1670 (Besse, op. cit. i, 249), at Hitchin, at Sawbridgeworth 

 and Widford in 1672 (ibid.), at Royston and Buntingford in 1674 (ibid. 250). 



- cf. ibid. 249, 251, 253 ; Quarter Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec), i, 250. ^ Stat. 22 Cha . II, cap. I. 



■• Stat. 5 Eliz. cap. i ; 7 Jas. I, cap. 6 ; cf. ibid. 16 Ric. II, cap. 5. The oath was to be tendered by 

 tuo justices ; if refused the offender was to be committed to gaol until the next assizes. If refused at the 

 assize?, pr.i-munire, i.e. outlawrv, was incurred. 



^ l;e;;e, op. cit. i, 242. ^ For gossip on this point see Pepys, Diary, 4 Apr. 1668. 



" Besse, op. cit. i, 243-4 ; Extracts from State Papers (Friends' Hist. S jc. S'jr. 2), 165. For another 

 p.;rdon by Charles II see Besse, op. cit. i, 244. ' Stat. I Will, and Mary, cap. 18. 



" Ib';d. 2 & 3 Ed-.v. \'I, cap. 13. 



