peace or chief magistrate before whom he shall be convicted, as aforesaid, shall certify the same under his hand and seal, to any justice of peace or chief magistrate of such other county or corporation wherein the said person or persons are inhabitants,, or are fled into; (4) which said justice or chief magistrate respectively, is hereby authorized and required to levy the penalty or penalties in this act mentioned, upon the goods and chattels of such person or persons, as fully as the said other justice of peace might have done, in case he or they had been inhabitants in the place where the offence was committed.

XIV. Provided also, that no person shall be punished for any offence against this act, unless such offender be prosecuted for the same within three months after the offence committed. (2) And that no person who shall be punished for any offence by virtue of this act, shall be punished for the same offence by virtue of any other act or law whatsoever.

XV. Provided, and be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that every alderman of London for the time being, within the city of London, and the liberties thereof, shall have (and they and every of them are hereby empowered and required to execute) the same power and authority within London, and the liberties thereof, for the examining, convicting,

His

ceived, and the griefs and infirmities he had contracted in England by cold, and hardships, and long imprisonments, returned upon him now he came to sea, and caused great pain. And after having been seven weeks and some odd days at sea, he, with his fellow-travellers, came safe to the island of Barbadoes. occurrences there he hath described at large in his Journal. Many of the great ones, especially the governor, shewed him much kindness. And after he had edified his friends there on - many occasions; and exhorted them to the maintaining of good order, both in things relating to the church, and in the governing of their blacks; he now, being restored to health again, departed the island after a stay of three months, and set sail for Jamaica, where he had not been long, before Elizabeth Hooton, several times mentioned in this work, departed this life, having been well the day before she died; and thus she finished her days in a good frame of mind. After he had been there about seven weeks, he performed his service to his satisfaction.

In the beginning of the year 1672, he took shipping for Maryland, where being come, he with those with him travelled through woods and wildernesses, over bogs and great rivers, to New-England. By the way he had sometimes opportunity to speak to the Indians and their kings; and at other times he met with

singular cases, all which, for brevity's sake, I pass by in silence. He went also to the town formerly called New Amsterdam, which name now is changed into that of New York. Here he lodged at the governor's house, and had also a meeting there. From thence he returned again to Maryland, and came also into Virginia, and Carolina, and thus spent above a year travelling to and fro in America.

Whilst he was there, England and France were entered into war against Holland. Now though I have yet in remembrance those sad times; and in what a wonderful manner it pleased the Lord to save our country from being quite over-run and subdued, yet I shall not mention those things, since they are at large set down by other writers. Yet transiently I will give a touch of the remarkable exaltation of William III. prince of Orange, and afterwards king of Great Britain.

I have already said in its due place, how it was endeavoured to exclude him by the perpetual edict from ever being Stadtholder, or deputy. But how strong soever this edict was sworn to, yet heaven brought it to nought, and broke the ties of it by the refuse of the nation : for women, and many others of the mob, forced the magistrates, when the French were come into the province of Utrecht, and all seemed to run into confusion, to break their oaths, and to

longing to the king, as well as to the poor; and thus the king and the poor got but little of

their plunder. Nevertheless it so happened

sometimes, that those who were finable, were freed by the justices; for they knew very well, that those informers, who were also witnesses, were cunning sharkers, who were only concerned to get their thirds of the booty, and therefore found out a way by which they shewed that they were knavish and unjust in their office, therefore not fit to give evidence; so that it hath sometimes fallen out, that an honest justice hath cleared those informed against, when the informer missed in his evidence, either in the day of the month, or the like, in the complaint.

In London there once appeared before the lord mayor, sitting at a court of alderman, an impudent informer, having such a quantity of informations for fines as would have wronged the parties to the value of 15001. but the mayor abominating such a practice, adjourned the court, and went away. But this hardy informer was not content to let the matter fall thus, but appeared before the court from time to time, to make a booty of honest peoples' goods; but they still put him off, until at last he was himself arrested for debt, and carried to prison, where he ended his days.

Although now the law against seditious con

the very same thing; and I asked him, whether the liturgy was according to the Scriptures? And whether we might not read the Scriptures, and speak Scriptures? He said, yes. I told him that this act took hold only of such as meet to plot and contrive insurrections, as late experience had shewn; but they never had experienced that by us. Because thieves are somɛ

times on the road, must not honest men travel therefore? And because plotters and contrivers have met to do mischief, must not an honest, peaceable people, meet to do good? If we had been a people that did meet and contrive insurrections, &c. we might have drawn ourselves into fours: for four might do more mischief in plotting, than if there were four hundred; because four might speak out their minds more freely one to another, than four hundred could. Therefore we being innocent, and not the people this act concerns, we keep our meetings as we used to do; and I said, I believed, that he knew in his conscience we were innocent.

After this and more discourse, the lord mayor, whose name was Samuel Starling, let them go, seeing the informer was gone before, and now nobody accused them. The treatment this informer met with, made others scrupulous, yet several of their meetings in London were disturbed, and some of their preachers cast into prison; but though the Baptists and other dis