Radicalism, Anxiety, and Inquiry Nicholas Adams (University of Birmingham) Wo to thee Town of Cambridge, thy wickedness surmounteth the wickedness of Sodom; therefore repent whilst thou hast time , lest I consume thee with fire, as I have done it ; therefore harden not your hearts , lest I consume you and my wrath burn like fire, and I consume you in my fierce angers and so be brought to nought; for thou hast joyned hands with thy sister Jerusalem; therefore will I uncover thy nakedness, and thy shame unfold that the Beast in thee may be discovered that sitteth on many waters for thou art full of wickedness, thy hands are full of deceit, the well-favoured harlot lodgeth in thee, the mother of witchcraft and now I am raising my swift witness to confound her ways… 1 This is Hester Biddle’s address to Cambridge from 1655, comparing Cambridge to Sodom and calling the town to repentance. It is complexly scriptural and uncompromising in its insistence that religious life in England change and conform to a better and more godly way. Quakers like Biddle were rewarded for their troubles over the following decade by growing persecution, leading eventually to a debate in Parliament. An Act for preventing mischiefs and dangers, that may arise by certain persons called Quakers, and others refusing to take lawful oaths. "Whereas, of late times, certain persons under the name of Quakers, and other names of separation, have taken up and maintained sundry dangerous opinions and tenets, and among others, that the taking of an oath in any case whatsoever, although before a lawful magistrate, is altogether unlawful and contrary to the Word of God; and the said persons do daily refuse to take an oath, though lawfully tendered, 1 This text is discussed in Rachel Muers (ed.) Testimony: Quakerism and Theological Ethics (London: SCM, 2015), pp.34-35. The full text can be found at https://www.woodbrooke.org.uk/data/files/CPQS/Corpus/QHC13_Biddle.txt (accessed 20.5.16). If the town of Cambridge should feel unfairly singled out, it may be a consolation to know that there is a similar address ‘Wo to thee city of Oxford’ from the same year.