When the prisoners were gone, the recorder gave the jury their charge, upon which William Penn stood up, and with a loud voice said, "I appeal to the jury, and this great assembly, whether it be not contrary to the undoubted right of every Englishman, to give the jury their charge in the absence of the prisoners ?" The recorder answered with a sneer, Ye are present, ye do hear, do ye not? Penn answered, No thanks to the court; I have ten or twelve material points to offer in order to invalidate the indictment, but am not heard. The recorder said, Pull him down ; Pull the fellow down. Mead replied, these were barbarous and unjust proceedings; and then they were both thrust into the hole.

After the jury had withdrawn an hour and a half, the prisoners were brought to the bar to hear their virdict; eight of them came down agreed, but four remained above, to whom they used many unworthy threats, and in particular to Mr. Bushel, whom they charged with being the cause of the disagreement. At length, after withdrawing a second time, they agreed to bring them in guilty of speaking in Grace-Church-street; which the court would not accept for a verdict, but after many menaces told them, they should be locked up without meat, drink, fire, or tobacco; nay, they should starve, unless they brought in a proper verdict. William Penn being at the bar, said, " My jury ought not to be thus threatened. We were by force of arms kept out of our meeting-house, and met as near it as the soldiers would give us leave. We are a peaceable people, and cannot offer violence to any man. And looking upon the jury, he said, You are Englishmen, mind your privilege, give not away your right." To which some of them auswered, Nor will we ever do it. Upon this they were shut up all night without victuals or fire, or so much as a chamber-pot, though desired. Next morning they brought in the same verdict; upon which they were threatened with the utmost resentments. The mayor said, he would cut Bushel's throat as soon as he could. The recorder said, he never knew the benefit of an inquisition till now; and that the next sessions of parliament a law would be made wherein those that would not conform should not have the

benefit of the law. The court having obliged the jury to withdraw again, they were kept without meat and drink till next morning, when they brought in the prisoners not guilty; for which they were fined forty marks a man, and to be imprisoned till paid. The prisoners were also remanded to Newgate for their fines in not pulling off their hats. The jury, after some time, were discharged by habeas corpus returnable in the common pleas, where their commitment was judged illegal. This was a noble stand for the liberty of the subject in very dangerous times, when neither law nor equity availed any thing. The conventicle act was made to encourage prosecutions; and a narrative was published next year, of the oppressions of many honest people in Devonshire, and other parts, by the informers and justices; but the courts of justice outran the law itself.

Hitherto the king and parliament had agreed pretty well, by means of the large supplies of money the parliament had given to support his majesty's pleasures; but now having

The speech of the recorder, it appears by a quotation from the "State Trials" in a late publication, was fuller and stronger than Mr. Neal's abridged form represents it. "Till now," said this advoeste for arbitrary power, I never understood the reason of the policy and prudence of the Spaniards in suffering the inquisition among them, and certainly it will never be well with us till something like the Spanish inquisition be in England." Stuart's Peace and Reform against War and Corruption, p. 63. note; and Gough's History of the Quakers, vol. ii. p. 336. Ed.

*The prisoners excepted to this fine, as being arbitrarily imposed, in violation of the great charter of England, which saith; No man ought to be amerced, but by the oath of good and lawful men of the vieinage." The name of the judge, before whom the case of the jury was solemnly argued in the court of common pleas, and by whom it was judged illegal, was Sir John Vaughan, then chief justice: a name which deserves to be mentioned in this connection, with peculiar respect, and to be perpetuated by Englishmen with gratitude. For this adjudication confirmed in the strongest manner the rights of juries, and secured them from the attack of arbitrary and unprincipled judges. Sir John Vaug han was a man of excellent parts, and not only versed in all the knowledge requisite to make a figure in his profession, but he was also a very considerable master of the politer kinds of learning. He was the intimate friend of the great Seldon, and was buried in the Temple church, as near as possible to his remains. He died in 1674. His son published his Reports, in which is the above case. Gough, vol. ii. p. 336. British Biography, vol. vii. p. 130-31; and Granger's History, vol. iii. P. 369. Ed.

assurance of large remittances from France, his majesty resolved to govern by the prerogative, and stand upon his own legs. His prime counsellors were lord Clifford, Anthony Ashley Cooper, afterwards lord Shaftesbury, the duke of Buckingham, earl of Arlington, and duke Lauderdale, who from the initial letters of their names were called the CABAL. Lord Clifford was an open papist, and the earl of Arlington a concealed one. Buckingham was a debauchee, and reputed a downright atheist; he was a man of great wit and parts, and of sounder principles in the interests of humanity (says Mr. Baxter) than the rest of the court. Shaftesbury had a vast genius, but, according to Burnet, at best was a deist; he had great knowledge of men and things, but would often change sides as his interest directed. Lauderdale was a man of learning, and from an almost republican was become a perfect tool of the prerogative, and would offer at the most desperate councils. He had scarcely any traces of religion remaining, though he called himself a presbyterian, and had an aversion to king Charles I. to the last. By these five ministers of state the king and duke of York drove on their designs of introducing popery and arbitrary power; in order to which, a secret treaty was concluded with France; the triple alliance was broken, and a new war declared with the Dutch to destroy their commonwealth, as will be seen presently. By this means the king had a plausible pretence to keep up a standing army, which might secure him in the exercise of an absolute authority over his subjects, to set aside the use of parliaments, and settle the Roman catholic religion in the three kingdoms. These were the maxims the court pursued throughout the remaining part of this reign.

In the beginning of this year died Dr. Anthony Tuckney, born in September 1599, and educated in Emanuel

|| Eachard, p. 864. Rapin, p. 655.

To what is said concerning Dr. Tuckney by Mr. Neal, and before in the note to p. 141, vol. iii. it is proper to add two facts which are much to his honor. One is, that in his elections at St. John's, when the president, according to the language and spirit of the times, would call upon him to have regard to the godly, his answer was "no one should have a greater regard to the truly godly than himself; but he was de

college, Cambridge. He was afterwards vicar of Boston in Lincolnshire, where he continued till he was called to set in the assembly of divines at Westminster. In the year 1645, he was made master of his college, and in the year 1648, being chosen vice-chancellor, he removed to Cambridge with his family. He was afterwards master of St. John's and regius professor, which he held till the restoration, when the king sent him a letter, desiring him to resign his professorship, which if he did, his majesty, in consideration of the great pains and diligence of the said doctor in the discharge of his duty, would oblige his successor to give him sufficient security in law, to pay him one hundred pounds a year during his natural life. Upon this notice the doctor immediately resigned, and had his annuity paid him by Dr. Gunning who succeeded him. After the coming out of the five mile act he shifted about in several counties, and at last died in Spittleyard, London, February 1669, in the seventy-first year of his age, leaving behind him the character of an eminently learned and pious man, an indefatigable student, a candid disputant, and an earnest promoter of truth and godliness.*

About the same time died Mr. William Bridge, M. A. the ejected minister of Yarmouth; he was student in Cambridge thirteen years, and fellow of Emanuel college. He afterwards settled in Norwich, where he was silenced by bishop Wren for non-conformity, 1637. He was afterwards excommunicated; and when the writ de excommunicato capiendo came out against him he withdrew to Holtermined to choose none but scholars:" adding very wisely, "they may deceive me in their godliness; they cannot in their scholarship." The other fact is, that though he is said to have had a great hand in composing the Confession and Catechisms of the assembly at Westminster, and in particular drew up the exposition of the commandments in the larger catechism; yet he voted against subscribing or swearing to the confession. &c. set out by authority. This conduct the more deserves notice and commendation, because the instances of a consistent adherence to the principles of religious liberty among those who were struggling for liberty, were so few and rare in that age. In the year 1753, Dr. Samuel Salter, prebendary of Norwich, published a correspondence betweeu Dr. Tuckney and Dr. Benjamin Whichcote, on several very interesting subjects. See Whichcote's Moral and Religious Aphorisms, preface the second, p. 15. Ed.

* Calamy, vol. ii. p. 77; or Palmer's Noncon. Mem. vol. i. p. 205.

land, and became pastor to the English church at Rotterdam, where Mr. Jer. Burroughs was preacher. In 1642, he returned to England, and was one of the dissenting brethren in the assembly of divines. He was chosen after some time minister of Great Yarmouth, where he continued his labors till the Bartholomew act ejected him with his brethren. He was a good scholar, and had a well-furnished library, was a hard student, and rose every morning winter and summer at four of the clock. He was also a good preacher, a candid and charitable man, and did much good by his ministry. He died at Yarmouth, March 12, 1670, ætat. seventy.

While the protestant dissenters were harassed in all parts of the kingdom, the Roman catholics were at ease under the wing of the prerogative; there were few or no processes against them, for they had the liberty of resorting to mass at the houses of foreign ambassadors, and other chapels, both in town and country; nor did the bishops complain of them in the house of lords, by which means they began in a few years to rival the protestants both in strength and numbers. The commons represented the causes of this misfortune in an address to the king, together with the remedies, which if the reader will carefully consider, he will easily discover the different usage of protestant non-conformists and popish recusants.‡

The causes of the increase of popery, were, 1. The great number of jesuits who were all over the kingdom. 2. The chapels in great towns for saying mass, besides ambassadors houses, whither great numbers of his majesty's sub

* Calamy, vol. ii. p. 478. Palmer, vol. ii. p. 208.

Dr.

§ In Peck's "Desiderata Curiosa" is a letter of William Bridge to\ Henry Scobel, Esq. clerk of the council, about augmenting the income of preachers, with the names of the independent ministers of prime note in the county of Norfolk. This shews that he was a leading man among the independents. Granger's History of England, vol. iii. p. 44. Grey imputes to Mr. Bridge a republican spirit, because in a sermon before the commons, he said, "The king must not only command according to God's law, but man's laws; and if he don't so command, resistance is not resistance of power but of will. To say, that such resistance must only be defensive, is nonsense; for so a man may be ever resisting, and never resist." Grey, vol. i. p. 187.