“Some of the beer shops at the Iron Bridge used to be kept open very late at night, and master was determined to put a stop to their being open later than ten o’clock. He used to go to them, and turn out all the men that were drinking in them after that time. This enraged some of these men so much, that they declared they would kill master; for they said, ‘they were determined that no parson should interfere with them.’ Some of master’s friends heard of this, and told him, and tried to persuade him not to go to the Iron Bridge the next night; and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas did not wish him to go; and we all begged him to stay at home that night; but he told us he was not at all afraid of the men, and when I said that they would be sure to do him some harm, he said, ‘Why, Fanny, they have no power over me to hurt me; the Almighty is above them.’ So master went to the public house, and saw the very men that had threatened to kill him, and he talked to them for a long time, and told them that they ought to have been at home with their families, and that he hoped he should never see them there again. He spoke so kindly, that they all listened to him, and never offered to hurt him; and when he had done talking to them, they told him, that they had fully determined to make an attack upon him that night, but that _then_ they felt as if they had no power to hurt him. So master shook hands with them all, and then they all took off their hats and wished him ‘safe home,’ and ‘long life to him.’ And they were never there again after ten o’clock; and I think what master said to them then, did one or two of them so much good, that they afterwards became pious.”
Mr. Mortimer was equally desirous of putting a stop to the desecration of the Lord’s day by the bargemen on the River Severn, and, for this purpose, he tried every means to prevent the barges from sailing on the Sunday. In doing this, he experienced great opposition from some of the barge owners, who purposely, as it appeared, kept their vessels locked at Coalport at the latter end of the week, and released them on the Sunday. At length Mr. M. was compelled to take them before the magistrates, and have them fined, by which means he succeeded in entirely putting a stop to this desecration.