A few years later, on another desolate road, crossing another lonely
plain, another traveller met with a very similar adventure thousands
of miles away from England. Only this traveller's experiences were
much worse than Leonard Fell's. He was not only attacked by three
robbers instead of one alone, but this happened amid many other far
worse dangers and narrower escapes. Possibly he even looked back, in
after days, to his encounter with the robbers as one of the pleasanter
parts of his journey!
This traveller's name was George Robinson, and he was an English
Quaker and a London youth. He has left the record of his experiences
in a few closely printed pages at the end of a very small book.
'In the year 1657,' he writes, 'about the beginning of the seventh
month [September], as I was waiting upon the Lord in singleness of
heart, His blessed presence filled me and by the power of His Spirit
did command me to go unto Jerusalem, and further said to me, "Thy
sufferings shall be great, but I will bear thee over them all."'
This was no easy journey for anyone in those days, least of all for a
poor man such as George Robinson. However, he set out obediently, and
went by ship to Leghorn in Italy. There he waited a fortnight until he
could get a passage in another ship bound for St. Jean d'Acre, on the
coast of Palestine, where centuries before Richard Coeur de Lion had
disembarked with his Crusaders. Innumerable other pilgrims had landed
there, since Richard's time, on their way to see the Holy Places at
Jerusalem. George Robinson refused to call himself a pilgrim, but he
had a true pilgrim's heart that no difficulties could turn back or
dismay.
After staying for eight days in the house of a French merchant at
Acre, he set sail in yet a third ship that was bound for Joppa (or
Jaffa, as it is called now). 'But the wind rising against us,'
Robinson says in his narrative, 'we came to an anchor and the next
morning divers Turks came aboard, and demanded tribute of those called
Christians in the vessel, which they paid for fear of sufferings but
very unwillingly, their demands being very unreasonable, and in like
manner demanded of me, but I refusing to pay as according to their
demands, they threatened to beat the soles of my feet with a stick,
and one of them would have put his hand into my pocket, but the
chiefest of them rebuked him. Soon after they began to take me out of
the vessel to effect their work, but one of the Turks belonging to the
vessel speaking to them as they were taking me ashore, they let me
alone, wherein I saw the good Hand of God preserving me.... After
this, about three or four days we came to Joppa.'
And there at Joppa (or Jaffa), where Jonah long ago had embarked for
Tarshish, and where Peter on the house-top had had his vision of the
great white sheet, our traveller landed. He proceeded straightway on
what he hoped would have been the last stage of his long journey to
Jerusalem.
Alas! he was mistaken. A few pleasant hours of travel he had, as he
passed through the palm-groves that encircle the city of Jaffa, and
over the first few miles of dusty road that cross the famous Plain of
Sharon. Ever as he journeyed he could see the tall tower of Ramleh,
built by the Crusaders hundreds of years before, growing taller as he
approached, rising in the sunset like a rosy finger to beckon him
across the Plains. When he reached it, in the shadow of the tall Tower
enemies were lurking. Certain friars up at Jerusalem, in the hilly
country that borders the plain, had heard from their brethren at Acre
that a heretic stranger from England was coming on foot to visit the
Holy City. Now these friars, although they called themselves
Franciscans, were no true followers of St. Francis, the 'little poor
man of God,' that gentlest saint and truest lover of holy poverty and
holy peace. These Jerusalem friars had forgotten his teaching, and
lived on the gains they made off pilgrims; therefore, hearing that the
heretic stranger from heretic England was travelling independently and
not on a pilgrimage, they feared that he might spoil their business at
the Holy Shrines. Accordingly they sent word to their brethren, the
friars of Ramleh in the plain, to waylay him and turn him back as soon
as he had reached the first stage of his journey from Jaffa on the
coast.
'The friars of Jerusalem,' says Robinson, 'hearing of my coming, gave
orders unto some there [at Ramleh] to stay me, which accordingly was
done; for I was taken and locked up in a room for one night and part
of the day following, and then had liberty to go into the yard, but as
a prisoner; in which time the Turks showed friendship unto me, one
ancient man especially, of great repute, who desired that I might come
to his house, which thing being granted, he courteously entertained
me.'
Four or five days later there came down an Irish friar from Jerusalem
to see the prisoner. At first he spoke kindly to him, and greeted him
as a fellow-countryman, seeing that they both came from the distant
Isles of Britain, set in their silver seas. Presently it appeared,
however, that he had not come out of friendship, but as a messenger
from the friars at Jerusalem, to insist that the Englishman must make
five solemn promises before he could be allowed to proceed on his
journey. He must promise:
'1. That he would visit the Holy Places [so the friar called them] as
other pilgrims did.