THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 53 
were able to take care of themselves. Cromwell, with a large- 
hearted liberality, even protected the arch-heretic Unitarian Biddle. 
But the Quakers had very few friends ; and, as in the earlier days 
of the Reformation, the men whose religious position depended 
solely upon the exercise of the right of private judgment perse- 
cuted those who dared to follow their judgment to different 
conclusions. The Quakers were fair game, and safe. I admit 
that they were aggravating, and that they showed little considera- 
tion for others in their perpetual testifyings in steeple and meeting- 
houses. 
The persecutions of the Quakers at Plymouth began with a 
drunken naval chaplain, who attended a meeting held by Halhead 
and Salthouse in the garden of John Harris, and got excessively 
angry at being told to combine works with faith. He complained 
to John Paige, the mayor, and Salthouse and Halhead were com- 
mitted to the assizes as disturbers of the public peace, and for 
i ' diverse other high misdemeanours against a late proclamation 
prohibiting the disturbance of ministers and other Christians in 
their assemblies and meetings. 7 ' They were the disturbed; they 
were prosecuted as the disturbers. Then Margaret Killam offended 
the dignity of his worship the mayor by speaking to him on re- 
ligious matters ; and to gaol she went. Next year Priscilla Cotton, 
Margaret Cole, and Katherine Martindale spoke to the priest and 
people in the Church, after the priest — George Hughes, I sup- 
pose — had finished his sermon ; and to gaol went they : while 
Barbara Pattison was locked up for interrupting a funeral sermon. 
In 1658, John Evans, for speaking to the people in a steeple-house, 
was not only imprisoned, but whipped through the streets. And 
so matters went on, until by 1660, the year of the glorious restora- 
tion of Charles II., every prison in the county was crowded with 
the Friends. " Within two months of that year the High Gaol 
and Bridewell of Exeter received no less than seventy, including 
all the men inhabitants of Plymouth of that persuasion. * 
The evil days of Nonconformity were now at hand. Eor a 
quarter of a century, with intermissions that made the recurrence 
of tyranny but more galling, Presbyterian and Baptist, Inde- 
pendent and Quaker, were subjected to a persecution more per- 
sistent than any which England had known. " Continually 
* See the w History of the Friends in Devonshire." By Mr. R. Dymond, 
F.S.A. 
