The meetings now gathered, wherever "the man in leather breeches" went were immense. At one in Bristol, he tells us, 10,000 people were present, and often 2000 or 3000 are mentioned as collecting to hear him. The energetic evangelist often had periods of grudged but not useless interruption of his labours by imprisonment. Indeed, as Mr. W. E. Forster says, he "would have been qualified to draw up a report of the state of the gaols of the Island, so universal and experimental was his acquaintance with them." But his imprisonments did not make him cease from labour. He wrote innumerable letters and tracts, and he preached the gospel to those that came to see him with such effect, that one of Cromwell's Chaplains said they could not do him a greater service for spreading his principles in Cornwall, than to imprison him in Launceston gaol.
In 1656 occurred the sad episode of James Nayler's fall. He had been one of the most popular of the Quaker preachers, and had enjoyed the warm friendship of Fox and other leaders. But extravagant praise turned his head so far that he listened to blasphemous songs and invocations addressed to him by excited women, allowed them to kneel before him, and even to welcome him to Bristol with a horrible parody of our Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem. These miserable proceedings he did not like, but he excused them as honors done, not to him, but to Christ his Lord. The way in which Fox and other Friends acted in this matter was most praiseworthy. Many of the enthusiasts who misled Nayler were not truly Friends at all, and yet the Society was credited with fanaticism on account of their proceedings. Their enemies exulted in a clear case against them, and the religious world seemed justified in regarding them with suspicion. But in spite of all this, the Friends clung to the deluded man, and tried every means to open his eyes. George Fox visited him in Exeter gaol, and used every power of reason and persuasion, and at last finding he could do nothing with him, sadly gave him to understand that their friendship was at an end, and that Friends could no longer regard him as one of them. Yet still they visited him, and tried hard to gain the Protector and Parliament to their humane view of the right way of dealing with the case, and they had their reward. The cloud that obscured his mental vision passed away, and he deeply and truly repented of his sad error. He published a full recantation, took upon himself the whole blame, absolving the Society from all share; and endeavoured in every way to undo the mischief he had done. But whilst their love and gentleness had thus conquered, the barbarous spirit of the age had vindicated orthodoxy, by passing and executing the horrible sentence of branding and tongue boring. And it is sad to think, that the man who endured this torture was already a repentant man, won by love, not by severity, to confess and renounce his sin. The Quakers at once received him into full confidence and esteem, and helped him, in truly Christian fashion, to bear the results of his fall. Thus early in their history, in the midst of an age of much persecution and bigotry, were established those habits of loving Christian discipline, which have so nobly distinguished the Society ever since. But the reclaimed wanderer was not long allowed to continue his resumed preaching. In the summer of 1660 he was taken ill, and died in his 44th year.