THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 61 
Cheare had numerous companions in suffering on the island besides 
Lambert and Lilburn. To one of these, Edward Cock, who died 
in 1666, Cheare alludes byname; and also to a companion prisoner 
at Exeter, John Edwards, junior, who died there in his twenty- 
seventh year. Burnet says of the Baptists that they were generally 
men of virtue, and of a universal charity ; but these were days in 
which virtue availed nothing, and charity was a scoff. 
Sherwill was also imprisoned in 1665. On the 6th of October 
he was called on by some officers of the garrison to go to a tavern, 
as the governor was waiting for him. He went, was taken into 
custody by a guard of soldiers, imprisoned, and not released until 
the 4th of December. 
In the March following, 1666, William Allen ^ records in his MS. 
diary that, without any law commanding it, most of the townsmen 
of Plymouth took the oath appointed for Nonconformist ministers; 
and several were compelled to enter into bonds to the amount of 
£1,000. "Tea," says Allen, " besides such kinde of impositions 
were not practised in any part of the two kingdoms as in Ply- 
mouth.' ' If so things must have been bad indeed. And I find 
that in 1664-65 the pillory and stocks were repaired. 
The passing of the Five Mile Act in 1665 marked the culmina- 
ting point of this first period of persecution. Por the next three 
years Nonconformity in Plymouth seems to have been winked at. 
Nonconformists could not assemble for public worship } nor take any 
part in public affairs ; but it was something to be able to meet 
without danger of disturbance by constable or soldier, and being fined 
or imprisoned at justicial caprice. By the Five Mile Act ministers 
were not allowed to come or be except in travelling within five 
miles of any city, town, corporation, borough returning members 
to parliament, or of a place in which they had exercised the min- 
istry, unless they took an oath of fidelity to the Constitution in 
Church and State, and swore that it was not lawful to take up 
arms against the king. 
In 1670 persecution was renewed, and a new Conventicle Act 
passed. The first Conventicle Act of 1663 declared that wherever 
five persons, beyond those of the same household, should assemble 
in a religious congregation, each should be liable, for the first 
offence, to be fined <£5, or imprisoned three months ; for the second 
offence the penalty was doubled ; and the third entailed transport a- 
* The mayor who was ejected for his Nonconformity. 
