xviii 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



damnable idolaters ; and we were unceremoniously 

 ousted out of our tenements : our only crime being 

 a conscientious adherence to the creed of our an- 

 cestors, professed by England for nine long centuries 

 before the Reformation. So determined were the 

 new religionists that we should grope our way to 

 heaven along the crooked and gloomy path which 

 they had laid out for us, that they made us pay 

 twenty pounds a month, by way of penalty, for 

 refusing to hear a married parson read prayers in 

 the church of Sandal Magna ; which venerable 

 edifice had been stripped of its altar, its crucifix, its 

 chalice, its tabernacle, and all its holy ornaments, 

 not for the love of God, but for the private use and 

 benefit of those who had laid their sacrilegious hands 

 upon them. My ancestors acted wisely. I myself 

 (as I have already told the public, in a printed let- 

 ter,) would rather run the risk of going to hell with 

 St. Edward the Confessor, Venerable Bede, and 

 St. Thomas of Canterbury, than make a dash at 

 heaven in company with Harry VIII., Queen Bess, 

 and Dutch William. 



Oliver Cromwell broke down our drawbridge ; 

 some of his musket balls remaining in one of the old 

 oaken gates, which are in good repair to this day. 

 Not being able to get in, he carried ofi" every thing 

 in the shape of horses and cattle that his men could 

 lay their hands on. 



Dutch William enacted doubly severe penal laws 

 against us : during the reign of that sordid foreigner, 

 some little relaxation was at last made in favour of 

 dissenters ; but it was particularly specified, that 



