In vain the Lord Mayor and the Recorder Jefferies threatened as before; the Lord Mayor shouting out, “Gaoler, bring fetters, and shake this pestilent fellow to the ground!”

“Do your will,” answered Penn; “I care not for your fetters!”

The Recorder Jefferies now cried out, “By my troth, I could never before understand why the Spaniards suffered the Inquisition among them; and, to my mind, it will never be well with us in England till we have among us something like the Inquisition.”

“Boy,” whispered Christison to his son, “you heard those words. The knave has a good idea of his master’s notions and designs. If the Inquisition,—and I know something of it,—is ever established in this fair England of ours, it must either be quickly driven out again, or our country will be no fit place for honest men.”

Once more the jury were locked up, without food, fire, or water; but they were Englishmen to the backbone, and were ready to die in the cause of civil freedom, rather than play traitors to their own convictions.

On Monday the court again sat. Each juror was separately questioned, and one and all pronounced “Not guilty.” The Recorder on this fined them forty marks a man, and imprisonment in Newgate till the fines were paid. Penn and Mead were fined in the same way, the Recorder crying out, “Put him out of court! Take him away!”

“‘Take him away!’” exclaimed Penn. “Whenever I urge the fundamental laws of England, ‘Take him away!’ is their answer; but no wonder, since the Spanish Inquisition sits so near the Recorder’s heart.”

Both prisoners and jurors were carried off to Newgate, refusing to pay the fines: Penn and Mead as a case of conscience; while Bushel advised his fellow-jurors to dispute the matter. The jurors were committed to prison on the 5th of September, and it was not till the 9th of November that the trial came on. Learned counsel were engaged for their defence; Newdegate, one of them, arguing that the judges may try to open the eyes of the jurors, but not to “lead them by the nose.” Christison and his son were present. “I had hoped to spend some years in my native land, and renew the friendship I formed in my youth,” observed the former; “but I tell thee, Wenlock, if this trial goes against those twelve honest men, I will forswear my country, and go and seek thy fortune and mine in some other land, where knaves do not, as here, ‘rule the roost.’” When, however, the twelve judges gave an almost unanimous verdict in 

 Prev. P 13/76 next