Solomon Eccles

[4][5] The statute defined it as a criminal offence if more than five persons, "over and besides those of the same household, if it be in a house where there is a family inhabiting, or if it be in a house, field or place where there is no family inhabiting" assembled together "under colour or pretence of any exercise of religion, in other manner than according to the liturgy and practice of the Church of England."

In May 1665, Eccles was arrested in Southwark, though he probably lived in the middle of the City of London, and was put away in prison for two or three months – probably in the Clink on the South Bank.

He made George Whitehead his executor, and left money to the Quakers Leonard Fell and James Lancaster.

Eccles, under the name Eagle, features as a major character in Harrison Ainsworth's novel Old St. Paul's, a fictional chronicle of the Great Plague and the Fire of London.

The cover of the record shows an 1843 painting by Paul Falconer Poole depicting the scene reported above.