were brought to the bar, and pleaded not guilty to the indictment. The Court was then adjourned.

On the third of the month, William Penn and William Mead were brought again into Court. One of the officers as they entered pulled off their hats. Upon this the Lord Mayor became furious, and in a stern voice ordered him to put them on again. This being done, the Recorder fined each of the prisoners forty marks, observing that the circumstance of being covered there amounted to a contempt of Court.

It

The witnesses were then called in and examined. appeared from their testimony that on the fifteenth of August between three and four hundred persons were assembled in Gracechurch Street, and that they saw William Penn speaking to the people, but could not distinguish what he said. One, and one only, swore that he heard him preach; but on further examination he said that he could not on account of the noise understand any one of the words spoken. With respect to William Mead, it was proved that he was there also, and that he was heard to say something; but nobody could tell what. This was in substance the whole of the evidence against them.

It appears probable that the arrest was made in consequence of the Conventiele Act, then recently passed, but a prosecution upon that act was not sufficient to gratify the malice of the mayor and his associates. The mayor chose to commit them as rioters, and the indictment was apparently framed with a view to involve them and their case in the intricacies of the unwritten law, and to subject them to such penalty as the malice of the Court might prescribe. The definition of an unlawful assembly would

appear to have been borrowed from the Conventicle Act; for in the fourth section of that act, meetings for religious purposes, not according to the liturgy of the Church of England, are reckoned unlawful assemblies, yet we have no account that this act was quoted or referred to during the trial. The jury were urged to convict William Penn of preaching to an unlawful assembly, without being informed what constituted such an assembly, or what penalty would be awarded. The fact of his speaking to a number of people in the street being established, if the jury could have been induced to decide that he was speaking to a tumultuous assembly, the Court would unquestionably have put their own construction upon it, and decided that the penalty as well as the offence was to be found in the lex non scripta.

The witnesses having finished their testimony, William Penn acknowledged that both he and his friend were present at the place and time mentioned. "We are so far," says he, "from recanting, or declining to vindicate the assembling of ourselves to preach, pray, or worship the eternal, holy, just God, that we declare to all the world. that we do believe it to be our indispensable duty to meet incessantly upon so good an account; nor shall all the powers upon earth be able to divert us from reverencing and adoring our God, who made us."

These words were scarcely pronounced when Brown, one of the sheriffs, exclaimed that he was not there for worshipping God, but for breaking the law. William Penn replied that he had broken no law, and desired to know by what law it was that they prosecuted him, and upon what law it was that they founded the indictment.

The Recorder replied, the common law. William asked where that law was. The Recorder did not think it worth while, he said, to run over all those adjudged cases for so many years, which they called common law, to satisfy his curiosity. William Penn thought if the law were common, it should not be so hard to produce. He was then desired to plead to the indictment; but on delivering his sentiments on this point, he was pronounced a saucy fellow.

The following is a specimen of some of the questions and answers at full length, which succeeded those now mentioned:

Recorder. The question is, whether you are guilty of this indictment.

W. Penn. The question is not, whether I am guilty of this indictment, but whether this indictment be legal. It is too general and imperfect an answer to say it is the common law, unless we know where and what it is; for where there is no law, there is no transgression; and that law which is not in being, is so far from being common, that it is no law at all.

Recorder. You are an impertinent fellow. Will you teach the Court what law is? It is lex non scripta, that which many have studied thirty or forty years to know, and would you have me tell you in a moment?

W. Penn.-Certainly, if the common law be so hard to be understood, it is far from being very common; but if the Lord Coke in his Institutes be of any consideration, he tells us that common law is common right, and that common right is the Great Charter privileges confirmed.

Recorder. Sir, you are a troublesome fellow, and it is not to the honor of the Court to suffer you to go on.

W. Penn.-I have asked but one question, and you have not answered me, though the rights and privileges of every Englishman are concerned in it.

Recorder. If I should suffer you to ask questions till to-morrow morning, you would be never the wiser.

W. Penn. That is according as the answers are. Recorder.-Sir, we must not stand to hear you talk all night.

W. Penn.-I design no affront to the Court, but to be heard in my just plea; and I must plainly tell you, that if you deny me the oyer of that law which you say I have broken, you do at once deny me an acknowledged right, and evidence to the whole world your resolution to sacrifice the privileges of Englishmen to your arbitrary designs.

Recorder. Take him away. My Lord, if you take not some course with this pestilent fellow to stop his mouth, we shall not be able to do anything to-night.

Mayor. Take him away.

him into the bale-dock.

Take him away. Turn

W. Penn.-These are but so many vain exclamations. Is this justice or true judgment? Must I, therefore, be taken away, because I plead for the fundamental laws of England? However, this I leave upon the consciences of you, who are of the jury, and my sole judges, that if these ancient fundamental laws, which relate to liberty and property, and which are not limited to particular persuasions in matters of religion, must not be indispensably maintained and observed, who can say he hath a right to the coat upon his back? Certainly our liberties are to be openly invaded, and our estates led away in triumph by

The Lord of heaven and earth

every malicious informer

Be silent, there.

will be judge between us in this matter.

Recorder.

W. Penn.-I am not to be silent in a case where I am so much concerned; and. not only myself, but many ten thousand families besides.

Soon after this they hurried him away, as well as William Mead, who spoke also, towards the bale-dock, a filthy, loathsome dungeon. The Recorder then proceeded to charge the jury. But William Penn hearing a part of the charge as he was retiring stopped suddenly, and raising his voice exclaimed aloud, "I appeal to the jury who are my judges, and this great assembly, whether the proceedings of the Court are not most arbitrary, and void of all law in endeavoring to give the jury their charge in the absence of the prisoners. I say it is directly opposite to and destructive of the undoubted right of every English prisoner, as Coke on the chapter of Magna Charta speaks." Upon this some conversation passed between the parties who were still distant from each other; after which the two prisoners were forced to their cells.

Being now out of all hearing, the jury were ordered to agree upon their verdict. Four, who appeared visibly to favor the prisoners, were abused, and actually threatened by the Recorder. They were then all of them sent out of Court. On being brought in again they delivered their verdict unanimously, which was, "Guilty of speaking in Gracechurch Street."

The magistrates upon the bench now loaded the jury with reproaches. They refused to take their verdict, and