English composer and teacher of virginals and viol. On becoming a Quaker In middle age, he publicly burned his instruments and music on Tower Hill and took to shoemaking. To show his contempt for 'steeple-houses' he for two Sundays running insisted on making shoes in the pulpit of a London church during service, and had to be removed by the constable. During the plague of London he ran about the streets stripped to the waist and with a burning brazier on his head, warning men to repent. Later he accompanied George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, to the West Indies, and also went to New England. He wrote a wild book against music, A Musick Lector, which appeared in 1667. Probably the father of Solomon Eccles 2.