"One while," says Baxter, "divers of them went naked through divers chief towns and cities of the land, as a prophetical act: some of them have famished and drowned themselves in melancholy;" and he adds, more especially, as his own experience in Kidderminster, "I seldom preached a lecture, but going and coming I was railed at by a Quaker in the market-place in the way, and frequently in the congregation bawled at by the names of Hireling, Deceiver, False Prophet, Dog, and such like language." The Protector's own chapel in Whitehall was not safe.

On April 13, 1656, "being the Lord's day," says the _Public Intelligencer_ for that week, "a certain Quaker came into the chapel in sermon time, and in a very audacious manner disturbed the preacher, so that he was fain to be silent a while, till the fellow was taken away.

His Highness, being present, did after sermon give order for the sending him to a justice of peace, to be dealt with according to law."-- Naturally, the whole sect suffered for these indecencies and extravagances of some of its members, and the very name _Quakerism_ became a synonym for all that was intolerable.

The belief had got abroad, moreover, that "subtle and dangerous heads," Jesuits and others, had begun to "creep in among them," to turn Quakerism to political account, and "drive on designs of disturbance." Altogether the Protector and Council were sorely tried.

Their policy seems, on the whole, to have been to let Quakerism run its course of public obloquy, and get into jail, or even to the whipping-post _ad libitum_, for offences against the peace, but at the same time to instruct the Major-Generals privately to be as discreet as possible, making differences between the sorts of Quakers, and especially letting none of them come to harm for their mere beliefs.