ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



might excommunicate the offender, and after a lapse of forty days might 

 sue a process of de excommunicato capiendo from the temporal courts ; a further 

 statute ^° enabled the offender to be imprisoned until he rendered obedience. 

 Innumerable cases of this nature were tried " and great hardships inflicted, 

 Quakers being imprisoned for neglect to pay tithe as late as 1690," for the 

 Toleration Act had not touched the point. In 1696, however, it was 

 enacted" that two justices might ascertain the amount due and might 

 obtain it by distraint. From this time prosecutions ceased, and in the i8th 

 century the Quaker frequently came to a friendly understanding with the 

 parson by which distress was levied in the least inconvenient way possible. 



With the 1 8th century begin the extant records^* of the Hertfordshire 

 meetings. The society seems to have been spreading at this date, and in 

 1704 there was a monthly meeting at Watford. ^^ A request for the licence of 

 a dwelling-house for worship at Watton at Stone was made in 1707," and in 

 1710 a similar request was made for the house of John Kilbey at Ickleford." 

 Three years later Samuel Peet sought a licence for his barn at Graveley,'* 

 and in 171 9 the Friends at Hemel Hempstead had newly erected a meeting- 

 house on land behind the Bell Inn.'^ The Quakers had been strong here for 

 some time past, and a school was kept by John Owen, a Quaker,^" who in 

 1722 was found not guilty of a charge of keeping a private school without 

 episcopal sanction." A licence was sought for meeting-houses in Crossbrook 

 Street, Cheshunt, in 1726 and near Kilne's Lane, Ware, in 1729.^^ Some 

 twelve years before the greater part of the Dissenters in Welwyn were 

 Quakers, but the return ^^ then made seems to show that the number of 

 Quaker families had decreased in the past few years.^* In 1785 the Hert- 

 fordshire Quarterly Meeting was united with that for Bedfordshire, and so 

 continued until 1865 ; since then it has been entirely merged in the Bedford- 

 shire Quarterly Meeting. In 1865 the Albans Monthly Meeting ceased to 

 have a separate existence, being merged in that for Leighton and Luton.'^ 



In 1852 meeting-houses were registered in Norton Street, Baldock, 

 Brand Street, Hitchin, Lord's Lane, Hoddesdon, Great Berkhampstead and 

 Kibe's Lane, Ware.^^ In addition to these other meetings were established 

 at Hertford and Hemel Hempstead.^' Monthly meetings were held at 

 St. Albans, Hertford and Hitchin, while the quarterly meetings were held at 

 Hertford or Hitchin.''* Towards the close of the 19th century the number 

 of Friends in the county greatly decreased. The migration from London 

 to the home counties has resulted, however, in the establishment of new 



1" Stat. 5 Eliz. cap. 23. 1-' Besse, op. cit. i, 241 et seq. ; Quarter Sess. R. passim. 



12 Besse, op. cit. i, 254. " Stat. 7 & 8 Will. Ill, cap. 34. 



'^^ Friends' Hist. Soc. Joum. viii, 108. The records of the Albans Monthly Meeting and the Albans 

 Monthly Meeting of Women Friends date from 1703. In 1688 Mark Swann had been appointed 'to keep 

 the monthly and quarterly meeting books and to record all the things concerning the county' (ibid, ii, 6). 



" The First Publishers of Truth (Friends' Hist. Soc), 342. 



" Quarter Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec), ii, 38. There was a Quaker meeting here in 1717 ('Speculum 

 Dioecesis ' [Alnwick Tower, Line.]). i' Quarter Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec), ii, 41. ^^ Ibid. 44. 



1^ Ibid. 54. This must have superseded the house licensed in 1699 (Urwick, op. cit. 437). For a 

 list of meeting-houses in 1717-29 see T. S. James, Presbyterian Chapels and Chantries, 663. 



2" Clutterbuck, op. cit. i, 424. 



21 Quarter Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec), ii, 55. He had been indicted for the same offence in 1720 (ibid.). 



22 Ibid. 60, 65. ^' ' Speculum Dioecesis ' (Alnwick Tower, Line). ^^ Ibid. 

 25 Friends' Hist. Soc. Joum. viii, 108. ^6 Urwick, op. cit. 855-7. 



'" An Account of the Times and Places of holding the meetings . . . of the Society of Friends, 1854. ^^ Ibid. 



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