206 LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. suppressed. Hereupon Baxter was apprehended; and, having refused to take the Oxford oath, he was, without any form of trial, committed by two 'justices of the peace to Clerkenwell prison for six month*. As he went to prison, he called on his friend Sergeant Fountain for legal advice, who, on an examination of the mittimus, advised him to seek for a habeas corpus, in the Court of CommonPleas. On this subject he remained some time in suspense. " My impris- onment," he says, "was at present no great suffering to me, for I had an honest jailer, who showed me all the kindness he could. I had a large room, and the liberty ofwalking in a fair garden. My wife was never so cheerful a companion to me as in prison, and was very much against my seekingto be released. She hadbrought somany necessaries, that we kept house as contentedly and com- fortably as at home, though in a narrow room, and I had the sight of more of my friends in a day, than I had at home in half a year. And I knew that, if I got out against theirwill, my- sufferings would be never the nearer to an end. But yet, on the other side, it was in the extremest heat of summer, when London was wont to have epidemical diseases. The. hope of my dying in prison, I have reason to think, was one great inducement to some of the instru- mente to move to what they did." Beside all this, his chamber was in a noisy place, so that he had little hope of sleeping but by day, and his strength was already so little, that such a change would soon destroy his life. The number of his visitors, too, made it impossible for him to do any thing but to entertain them. And, after,all, he was in prison, with no leave at any time to goout of doors, much less to attend public worship, or to preach to any body but the inmates of his narrow chamber. He was advised by some to petition the king; but he declined any such movement. His friends at court, the earl ofManchester, the earl of Orrery, and others, exerted their influence with the king in vain. Charles only assured them that he would not be offended if Baxter sought a remedy at law. So an appeal to the law was resolved upon ; and when the question came before the Court of Common Pleas, he was released on the ground of some informalities in the commitment. But here, according to his own, statement, was but the beginning of his sufferings. His enemies were exasperated, and he was still in their power. He had an expensive hired house on his hands, which he could no longer occupy. He knew not what to do with his goods and his family. He must go out of the county of Mid- dlesex ; and must go nowhere within five miles of any city or cor- porate town. "Where to find such a place, and therein a house, and how to remove my goods thither," he says, "and what to do
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