"Don't you know you are to appear uncovered before his worship?" Fox
presented his other cheek to the officer, and begged him to give him
another box for God's sake. The justice would have had him sworn before
he asked him any questions. "Know, friend," says Fox to him, "that I
never swear." The justice, observing he "thee'd" and "thou'd" him, sent
him to the House of Correction, in Derby, with orders that he should be
whipped there. Fox praised the Lord all the way he went to the House of
Correction, where the justice's order was executed with the utmost
severity. The men who whipped this enthusiast were greatly surprised to
hear him beseech them to give him a few more lashes for the good of his
soul. There was no need of entreating these people; the lashes were
repeated, for which Fox thanked them very cordially, and began to preach.
At first the spectators fell a-laughing, but they afterwards listened to
him; and as enthusiasm is an epidemical distemper, many were persuaded,
and those who scourged him became his first disciples. Being set at
liberty, he ran up and down the country with a dozen proselytes at his
heels, still declaiming against the clergy, and was whipped from time to
time. Being one day set in the pillory, he harangued the crowd in so
strong and moving a manner, that fifty of the auditors became his
converts, and he won the rest so much in his favour that, his head being
freed tumultuously from the hole where it was fastened, the populace went
and searched for the Church of England clergyman who had been chiefly
instrumental in bringing him to this punishment, and set him on the same
pillory where Fox had stood.

Fox was bold enough to convert some of Oliver Cromwell's soldiers, who
thereupon quitted the service and refused to take the oaths. Oliver,
having as great a contempt for a sect which would not allow its members
to fight, as Sixtus Quintus had for another sect, _Dove non si chiamava_,
began to persecute these new converts. The prisons were crowded with