I went to Lincoln on Tuesday night, May 29th, and the election began on Wednesday, 30th.  A great part of the night our Isle people kept drumming, shouting, and firing of pistols and guns under the window where my wife lay, who had been brought to bed not three weeks.  I had put the child to nurse over against my own house; the noise kept his nurse waking till one or two in the morning.  Then they left off, and the nurse being heavy with sleep, overlaid the child.  She waked, and finding it dead, ran over with it to my house almost distracted, and calling my servants, threw it into their arms.  They, as wise as she, ran up with it to my wife and, before she was well awake, threw it cold and dead into hers.  She composed herself as well as she could, and that day got it buried.

A clergyman met me in the castle yard and told me to withdraw, for the Isle men intended me a mischief.  Another told me he had heard near twenty of them say, “if they got me in the castle yard, they would squeeze my guts out.”  My servant had the same advice.  I went by Gainsbro’, and God preserved me.

When they knew I was got home, they sent the drum and mob, with guns etc. as usual, to compliment me till after midnight.  One of them, passing by on Friday evening and seeing my children in the yard, cried out “O ye devils!  We will come and turn ye all out of doors a-begging shortly.”  God convert them, and forgive them!

All this, thank God, does not in the least sink my wife’s
spirits.  For my own, I feel them disturbed and
disordered. . . .

The rebuilding of the parsonage and some unhappy essays in farming his glebe had run the Rector still farther in debt:  and now, not satisfied with winning the election, his enemies struck at him privily.  His next letter is dated not three weeks later from the debtors’ ward in Lincoln.

Lincoln Castle, June 25th, 1705.

My Lord,—­Now I am at rest, for I am come to the haven where I have long expected to be.  On Friday last (June 23rd), when I had been, in christening a child, at Epworth, I was arrested in my churchyard by one who had been my servant, and gathered my tithe last year, at the suit of one of Mr. Whichcott’s relations and zealous friends (Mr Pinder) according to their promise when they were in the Isle before the election.  The sum was not thirty pounds, but it was as good as five hundred.  Now they knew the burning of my flax, my London journey, and their throwing me out of my regiment had both sunk my credit and exhausted my money.  My adversary was sent to, when I was on the road, to meet me, that I might make some proposals to him.  But all his answer was that ’I must immediately pay the whole sum, or go to prison.’  Thither I went, with no great concern to myself:  and find much more civility and satisfaction here than in brevibus gyaris of my own Epworth.