Treatise i.17

Treatise i.17: 'To the Keeper of his Majestys Goale commonly called the New prison in clerkenwell Middsex...wheras it hat bin proven unto us uppon oath that Richard Baxter clerke, hath taken unto him to preach in an unlawfull assembly, conventicle, or Meeting, under Colour or pretense of exercise of religion.'

This is a copy of the 'mittimus' for the imprisonment of Baxter in New Prison, Clerkenwell. A mittimus (literally 'we send') is a writ, from a justice of the peace or competent legal officer, directed to a gaoler, ordering him to receive and detain a person charged with an offence, until the time when he shall be delivered by due legal process. Baxter was confined for refusing the Oxford Oath.

'The Oxford Oath was a declaration of non-resistance to church or state as then established, required of nonconformist ministers under the Five Mile Act, if they were to come within a corporation of borough where they had formerly ministered or taught or preached. It was so called because the Five Mile Act was passed in 1665 when parliament was meeting in Oxford while the plague raged in London.' (Argent, catalogue entry for Treatise v.134)