narrative which would appear incredible did it not rest upon
unimpeachable authority. It would be difficult to believe the
records of the brutal treatment which the sufferers underwent had
they not been handed down to us in the State Trials, and in public
registers, over which the persecuted had no control. Two instances
will show the extreme peril in which the most learned and pious
men held their lives. John James, the pastor of a Baptist church in
Whitechapel, was charged, upon the evidence of a perjured drunken
vagabond named Tipler, a pipe-maker's journeyman, who was not present
in the meeting, but swore that he heard him utter treasonable words.
Notwithstanding the evidence of some most respectable witnesses,
who were present during the whole service, and distinctly proved
that no such words were used, Mr. James was convicted, and sentenced
to be hung. His distracted wife saw the king, presented a petition,
and implored mercy, when the unfeeling monarch replied, 'O! Mr.
James; he is a sweet gentleman.' Again, on the following morning,
she fell at his feet, beseeching his royal clemency, when he spurned
her from him, saying, 'John James, that rogue, he shall be hanged;
yea, he shall be hanged.' And, in the presence of his weeping
friends, he ascended from the gibbet to the mansions of the blessed.
His real crime was, that he continued to preach after having been
warned not to do so by John Robinson, lieutenant of the Tower,
properly called, by Mr. Crosby,[233] a devouring wolf, upon whose
head the blood of this and other innocent Dissenters will be found.
Another Dissenting minister, learned, pious, loyal, and peaceful,
was, during Bunyan's time, marked for destruction. Thomas Rosewell
was tried before the monster Jeffreys. He was charged, upon the
evidence of two infamous informers, with having doubted the power
of the king to cure the kings' evil, and with saying that they
should overcome their enemies with rams' horns, broken platters, and