xvin 
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 
