'If your sword and your tongue were both clipped, it would be as well for yourself and us.

Shall I not speak a few words in season to these good people but you must interrupt with your discordant bellowings ?' The busybody gathered himself together and slunk behind the group of councilmen, while the Mayor slowly ascended the steps of the market cross.

From this position he addressed us, speaking in a high piping voice which gathered strength as he proceeded, until it was audible at the remotest corners of the square.
'Friends in the faith,' he said, 'I thank the Lord that I have been spared in my old age to look down upon this goodly assembly.

For we of Taunton have ever kept the flame of the Covenant burning amongst us, obscured it may be at times by time-servers and Laodiceans, but none the less burning in the hearts of our people.

All round us, however, there was a worse than Egyptian darkness, where Popery and Prelacy, Arminianism, Erastianism, and Simony might rage and riot unchecked and unconfined.