THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 63 
leave the town. His son afterwards entered the ministry. Erett 
was a man of singular equanimity. Nearly all his property was 
lost in the capture of one ship — the Industry. He remarked to 
his daughter that there would be a little less for her, and said no 
more.* 
During this period Charles and his brother, the Duke of York, 
paid the town a couple of visits, when the corporation displayed 
an exuberant and costly loyalty. To be stirred to loyalty in these 
days was also to be moved to persecution ; but Charles, whatever 
he may have thought of the Nonconformist men, had no ill-feeling 
towards the Nonconformist women, if they were young and good- 
looking. Allen's sont records, with a certain amount of satis- 
faction, that his wife was kissed both by Charles and his brother 
on the Hoe. I suspect she was not alone in this. 
Whatever the extent of the lull may have been, there was a 
very decided revival of oppression in the concluding years of the 
reign of Charles. The church-and-king party had again got the 
upper hand in the corporation, and used their power unsparingly. 
The character of the men is shown by the fact that they took the 
pains to send to Launceston to invite that " famously loyal " J 
infamous brute Jefferies to pay the town a visit. This did not 
prevent his subsequently demanding the surrender of the town 
charter. 
In 1682-83 the persecutions were thus again in full swing. 
Nathaniel Jacob and Samuel Martyn were conveyed to the high 
gaol by Peter Millet, Samuel Grere, John Bosaverne, Francis 
Spurrell, and other constables ; while Richard Stephens and John 
Pane were equally energetic in carrying Quakers thither. In the 
following year, 1683-4, there is an entry of payments to one 
Richard Hall and his son Henry for their expenses in going to 
the assizes to give evidence against Nonconformist ministers. 
Jacob and Martyn and Sherwill were, so far as I know, the only 
ones in the town, and Sherwill appears to have escaped. The 
Baptists were without a pastor from the time Cheare was taken 
from them until 1687, when James to favour the Papists indulged 
the Protestants. Yet through nineteen years of persecution sixty- 
six members had kept the faith. Thomas Voisey, ejected from 
* John Fox's MBS. 
f Samuel Allen, who has also left a fragmentary diary. 
X Yonge's " Plymouth Memoirs." 
