THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 51 
the following year. The society must have been large, as the 
invitation was signed by one hundred and fifty members. In 1651 
a piece of land was bought in the Pig-market, now Bedford Street, 
and a meeting-house erected; which was rebuilt in 1751, abandoned 
in 1789 in favour of the chapel in How Street, and finally, having 
been converted into stores, removed in April, 1865. 
The Independents of the old united congregation and those of 
the garrison during the siege do not seem to have left any suc- 
cessors, and the Baptists continued the only separatists in Ply- 
mouth until the middle of 1654. There then came hither about 
the sixth month John Audland and Thomas Arey, two of the early 
Quakers, and were " received of many who were waiting for the 
Lord's appearance." They held several meetings in public and in 
private; " and on the first day the s d John Audland went to one 
of the steeple-houses in the Towne, and testyfied against the priest 
and there worship, and also sounded truth amongst them, for w cb 
the s d John Audland received from the people in the steeple-house 
pritty much Abuse ; and the s d Thomas Arey he went to the Baptist 
meeteing, and sounded truth amonge them, who stod in great op- 
position to his testimony.' ' On the 16th of the third month of 
1655 Thomas Salthouse and Miles Halhead visited Plymouth, and 
established the first meeting, their reward from the powers that 
were being thirteen months' imprisonment at Plymouth and Exeter. 
In the same year George Pox paid the first of his four visits to 
Devonshire, and his journal records how, " Having refreshed our- 
selves at our inn, we went to Eobert Cary's house, where we had a 
very precious meeting. At this meeting was one Elizabeth Tre- 
lawny, daughter to a baronet. She, being very thick of hearing, 
came close up to me, and clapped her ear very nigh me while I 
spoke ; and she was convinced. After the meeting came in some 
jangling Baptists; but the Lord's power came over them, and 
Elizabeth Trelawny gave testimony thereto. A fine meeting was 
settled there in the Lord's power, which hath continued ever since.' ' 
There is a tradition in the Plymouth Society that the first 
meeting-house of the Quakers here was a thatched building which 
stood at the head of Sussex Street. Near this was undoubtedly 
the original Quaker burial-ground, used as such before the erection 
of the original meeting-house on the site in Bilbury Street in 1674, 
and not given up until 1721. The present meeting-house replaced 
the old one in 1804. 
d 2 
