120 QUAKERISM IN GUERNSEY. 



"As for me I again served in the Militia and wore a red 

 coat and had to serve my turn at the watch house or tower 

 every six weeks or two months. But I no longer enjoyed the 

 life, for my brother's influence became stronger, and T felt 

 myself in duty bound to leave the Militia, but I did not give it 

 up readily and suffered much in mind. But very reluctantly 

 1 omitted to keep my watch, and when the Captain of my 

 Company asked me " Why ?" I told him 'for Conscience sake.' 

 He replied "Then I must have you to Court," but, although 

 the law is very severe in these Islands I was never prosecuted 

 then or since. 



"Our dear mother was for a time much tried with our 

 views and could not endure being addressed in the singular 

 number. 



" By this time I had made much progress in the clock- 

 making* business ; we also had apprentices, taken without any 

 premium, as well as an old fellow prisoner of mine, a kind of 

 quack doctor called John Wills, a man versed in most 

 sciences, whom we took into the house. We had been under 

 mother's orders until I came of age ; afterwards we paid for 

 our board and carried on the business in our names and were 

 favoured to get on, putting by nearly £100 a year, which 

 sum, as it was the custom, we put into the stocks — which 

 happened to be as high as 96 — not knowing what better to do, 



"About this time a great-aunt of mine died in London, 

 and I was obliged to go and discharge her affairs. Her 

 lodgings were in Martin's Lane, and I attended Peter's Court 

 Meeting. I soon thought of going to see John Elliott, 

 having been at his house with Claude Gray a year or two before, 

 whom I found to my rejoicing. I had desire to have acquaint- 

 ance with Friends in London, as we had known but one, 

 Thomas Soudy, who kindly took me to White Hart Court 

 (the headquarters of the Friends in London) on a 6th day, 

 where the Meeting for Suffering was sitting. He and I 

 travelled later through several streets in London, first to 

 Mildred Court (the Fry's London house) where William 

 Storrs Fry received us kindly, and at Claude's request gave 

 us several Friends' books ; next to John Elliott's, who also 

 gave us several, and thence to Simon Bailey, where we parted, 

 and I returned to Guernsey. By this time our dear mother 

 was becoming more reconciled to us as Friends and desirous 

 that we might marry amongst them. So my brother and I on 

 first days read and copied several Friends' Manuscripts and 

 books, and also attempted to translate some part of them into 

 French, which we thought might be instructive to our neigh- 



