Complete Works of Edward Burrough, Volume 3
Burrough's letters to rulers and magistrates — his bold addresses to Parliament, Oliver Cromwell, and the city authorities who persecuted Friends, demanding freedom of conscience and the rule of justice.
- Volume 3 of 7
- 450+ pages
- EPUB format
This edition
Read itE-book · EPUB
- Time to read6.5 hours
- Length93,515 words
- Files1 EPUB, DRM-free
How we get 6.5 hours
This figure is here so you can compare one book against another. Every title on the site is timed from its own word count at the same reading speed — nothing is adjusted book by book — so if this edition says 6.5 hours and another says half that, the second one really is about half the reading. It is a measure of size, in the way a page count is. Your own pace is your own: at the speeds typical adult readers actually manage, this edition runs anywhere from 5.2 hours to 8.9 hours.
What is in this edition
| Modernized text | 91,393 words |
|---|---|
| Introduction, chapter summaries and notes written for this edition | 2,122 words |
| Total | 93,515 words |
The introduction, the chapter summaries and the notes on people, places and unfamiliar terms were written for this edition. They are 2,122 of the 93,515 words above, and they are part of what you are buying.
Counted from the text of the EPUB you receive. Navigation, the title page, the table of contents and the licence page are excluded — they are packaging, not reading.
The reading rate
238 words per minute, for adult silent reading of non-fiction, applied unchanged to every title on the site. We did not pick the number; it is the pooled result of a published meta-analysis. Nothing is adjusted book by book — that consistency is what makes two of these figures worth comparing.
Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047
190 studies, 18,573 participants.
The same paper puts most adult readers between 175 and
300 words per minute, and those two speeds give the
5.2 hours and 8.9 hours above.
Because time is words divided by speed, an even range of speeds produces an
uneven range of times, so 6.5 hours sits nearer the fast end of that
range than the middle of it.
If it were a paperback
Roughly 267–374 pages.
Words per printed page is a typesetting convention, not a measurement — it moves with trim size, type size and leading. The range above assumes 250–350 words a page. Friends Illuminated publishes no print edition of this book; the figure is here only because pages are a more familiar size than words.
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About This Edition
Edward Burrough feared no earthly power. In this third volume, his pen turns to the rulers of England — Cromwell, Parliament, the magistracy — and his tone is unflinching. He writes not as a petitioner but as a prophet, calling the powerful to account before a higher tribunal. The letters and addresses gathered here span the years when Quakers were being imprisoned in large numbers for refusing to swear oaths, pay tithes, or cease their public ministry. Burrough documents the persecution in factual detail, then challenges the authorities: is this the liberty of conscience you promised? Is this the godly commonwealth you claimed to build?
These texts have both historical and devotional value. As history, they give an eyewitness account of what early Friends actually endured. As devotional reading, they model a quality rare in any age — the willingness to speak difficult truth to those who hold power over you, without hatred, without flattery, and without flinching. This modernized edition preserves the tone and argument of the originals while making them fully accessible to contemporary readers.
