[TO THE EDITOR OP VIE "SPECTATOR."]
SER,—With reference to the responsibility of Cromwell for the persecution of the Friends, the two following extracts from Quaker works recording interviews between the Pro- tector and members of that Society may possibly be of interest. In the Life of Edward Burrough we are told that three Friends, Anthony Pearson, Gerve.se Benson, and Thomas Aldam, presented a declaration against the Papacy, and com- plained with regard to the Oath of Abjuration that "many corrupt justices, knowing that Friends could not swear, would make a spoil of them by tendering it to them. Oliver replied : 'It was never intended for them ; I never so intended it." Again, in Sewell's "History of the Quakers" we find that in 1657 Edward Burrough himself interviewed Cromwell, laying before him the sufferings of Friends through refusal to pay tithes, and "Cromwell told him in effect that all persecution and cruelty was against his mind, and said that he was not guilty of those persecutions acted unjustly upon Burrough's Friends."—I am, Sir, dm, KATHERINE PEASE. Woodside, Darlington, May 21st.
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