Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/105

 teachers of the people called Mooreians or Manifestarians,’ London, 1659, 4to; ‘The Quakers no Deceivers, or the Management of an unjust charge against them confuted,’ 1660, 4to; and ‘The He-Goats Horn broken, or Innocency elevated against Insolency and Impudent False-hood,’ 1660, 4to. Other disputations took place at Fulham and Bluntisham. At Peterborough in April 1660 he had to be rescued from the mob by Lambert's old soldiers quartered in the town. Under the proclamation against conventicles he was soon in prison again, and in March 1661, while in Norwich Castle, he almost died of ague and gaol fever. A royal proclamation released him after sixteen weeks.

The first parliament after the Restoration brought in a bill (13 & 14 Car. II, cap. 1) for the suppression of quakers as ‘dangerous to the public peace and safety.’ Whitehead, Edward Burrough [q. v.], and Hubberthorn appeared before the committee several times in May 1661 to protest against its conditions. They were also heard at the bar of the house, 19 July, on the third reading. The bill, which forbade five quakers to meet for worship, passed; but although their meeting-houses were locked up, were turned into soldiers' quarters, or pulled down, the quakers continued to meet in the streets or in private houses.

From this time to 1672 Whitehead spent most of his time in prison. Once, while in White Lion prison, he was charged with being concerned in the Westmorland ‘Kipper Rigg Plot’ (cf., Early Cumberland and Westmorland Friends, pp. 4 seq.; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1663–4, pp. 632, 640). He lodged at this time, when at liberty, at the house of Rebecca Travers [q. v.] in Watling Street, and laboured in and about London. When, under a new act (16 Car. II), imprisoned quakers were sent to the colonies, he held meetings on board the transport ships at Gravesend. All through the plague he visited those in prison. In 1670 he married a pious widow ‘divers years’ older than himself, who was ‘like a mother to him.’

In the spring of 1672 Whitehead and his friend Thomas Moor had an audience with Charles II at Whitehall. Whitehead explained their conscientious objection to swearing, and consequent inability to take the oath of allegiance. In the end an order was given on 8 May to prepare a bill for the royal signature which should contain the names of all prisoners committed before 21 July. The instrument, upon eleven skins of parchment, and with the names of 480 prisoners eleven times repeated, is now the property of the Meeting for Sufferings (cf., Christian Progress). By this patent John Bunyan was released from Bedford gaol. Delays occurring in obtaining lists of the prisoners, it was not until 13 Sept. that the document was sealed (cf. Letters, p. 184). Whitehead made great exertions to obtain the release of quakers under this patent, visiting himself Chelmsford, Bury St. Edmunds, Norwich, and Hertford.

In little over a year, however, this indulgence was withdrawn. On 21 March 1679–80 Whitehead and Thomas Burr were taken from a meeting at Norwich and sent to gaol. When brought before the magistrates five weeks later, Francis Bacon, the recorder, refused to allow the mittimus to be read, and offered them the oath of allegiance. Whitehead's able and dignified defence is in his ‘Due Order of Law and Justice pleaded against Irregular and Arbitrary Proceedings ....’ London, 1680, 4to.

Whitehead had many interviews with Charles II. In 1673 he pleaded for Fox's liberation from Worcester gaol. On 16 Jan. 1679–80, with William Mead [q. v.], he presented details of the persecution Friends suffered by being confounded with papists, and showed how parliament had prepared a special clause for their relief in the bill of ease, but had been prorogued before the bill reached the upper house; on 17 Feb. 1681–2 he introduced some Bristol quakers to report the state of things there; in February 1682–3, with Gilbert Latey [q. v.], he described the sufferings of numbers in an underground dungeon at Norwich; on 25 April 1683 they saw Charles at Hampton Court, when he asked for an explanation of their peculiar language and wearing of hats, their own meanwhile having been gently removed by a court official and hung upon the park palings; on 8 Aug. Whitehead presented an address from the society clearing themselves from participation in the ‘Rye House plot.’ The last interview occurred only a few weeks before Charles's death, when, as Whitehead owns, he left fifteen hundred quaker men and women in prison, with hundreds more despoiled of their estates.

Shortly after James II's accession Whitehead represented this to him; three or four months later, accompanied by Robert Barclay, he had a second interview. James issued (15 March 1685–6) a warrant for their release. Whitehead next procured from James II the appointment of two commissioners, who sat at Clifford's Inn in June 1686 and effectually crushed the iniquitous trade of the ‘informers.’ The king also granted him a royal mandate for the stay of pro-