The year 1649 was ushered in by new labours. He was employed
occasionally in writing to judges and justices to do justice, and in
warning persons to fulfil the duties of their respective stations in
life.

This year was the first of all his years of suffering. For it happened
on a Sunday morning, that, coming in sight of the town of Nottingham,
and seeing the great church, he felt an impression on his mind to go
there. On hearing a part of the sermon, he was so struck with what he
supposed to be the erroneous doctrine it contained, that he could not
help publicly contradicting it. For this interruption of the service he
was seized, and afterwards confined in prison. At Mansfield again, as he
was declaring his own religious opinions in the church, the people fell
upon him and beat and bruised him, and put him afterwards in the stocks.
At Market Bosworth he was stoned and driven out of the place. At
Chesterfield he addressed both the clergyman and the people, but they
carried him before the mayor, who detained him till late at night, at
which unseasonable time the officers and watchmen put him out of the
town.

And here I would observe, before I proceed to the occurrences of another
year, that there is reason to believe that George Fox disapproved of his
own conduct in having interrupted the service of the church at
Nottingham, which I have stated to have been the first occasion of his
imprisonment. For if he believed any one of his actions, with which the
world had been offended, to have been right, he repeated it, as
circumstances called it forth, though he was sure of suffering for it
either from the magistrates or the people. But he never repeated this,
but he always afterwards, when any occasion of religious controversy
occurred in any of the churches, where his travels lay, uniformly