, an eminent person among the Quakers, was born at Snnbigg in the
, an eminent person among
the Quakers, was born at Snnbigg in the parish of Orton,
Westmoreland, about 1636, and received his education at
the free school of Blencoe in Cumberland. After leaving
school he was for a time engaged in the instruction of
youth, but before he had attained the age of eighteen, the
journal of his life exhibits him travelling in different parts
of England, propagating with zeal, as well as success, the
principles of the Quakers, then recently become known as
a distinct religious denomination. Of the Quakers and
their tenets, he had obtained some information a considerable time before an opportunity occurred for his being at
any of their meetings. At the first which he attended,
it happened that there was a young person present, who
feeling deep distress of mind, went out of the meeting,
and seated on the ground, unaware or regardless of being
observed, cried out “Lord, make me clean; O Lord,
make me clean!
” an ejaculation which, he says, affected
him more than any preaching he had ever heard. Continuing to attend the meetings of the Quakers, he became
united with them in profession, and, as has been
mentioned, a promnlgator of their doctrine. His first journey
was southward, and his first imprisonment, for to one in,
this character imprisonment may be mentioned as then
almost an event in course, was in the city of Norwich.
Another imprisonment of fourteen or fifteen months followed not long after at Edinondsbury, attended with circumstances of much hardship. From this he was released
by virtue of an order from the Protector; but was soon
again apprehended while preaching at Nayiand in Suffolk,
and by two justices sentenced to be whipped, under pretence of his being a* vagabond; which was executed with
severity, but neither the pain nor the ignominy of the punishment damped the fervency of the sufferer; and as persecution commonly defeats its own object, so in this case
the report of the treatment he had met with spreading in
the country, the resort to hear his preaching was increased.