Lord Mayor. You deserve to have your tongue cut out.

Recorder. If you discourse in this manner, I shall take occasion against you.

Mr. Mead having been now also thrust into the Baile Dock, the following charge was given to the jury, in the absence of the prisoners:

Recorder. You have heard what the indictment is. It is for preaching to the people, and drawing a tumultuous company after them; and Mr. Penn was speaking. If they should not be disturbed, you see they will go on; there are three or four witnesses that have proved this, that he did preach there, and that Mr. Mead did allow of it; after this, you have heard by substantial witnesses what is said against them. Now we are upon the matter of fact, which you are to keep to and observe, what has been fully sworn, at your peril.

Penn. [With a loud voice, from the Baile Dock] 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 offering 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 Cook, in the 2d Inst. 29, on the chap. of Magna Charta speaks.

Recorder. Why ye are present; you do hear, do you not?

Penn. No thanks to the court that commanded me into the Baile Dock; and you of the jury take notice, that I have not been heard; neither can you legally depart the court before I have been fully heard, having at least ten or twelve material points to offer, in order to invalid their appointment.

of Englishmen, that we should not be heard?

Recorder. Take them away into the hole.

The jury were now desired to go up stairs, in order to agree upon a verdict; and the prisoners remained in the "stinking hole." After an hour and a half's time, eight came down agreed, but four remained above, until sent for. The bench used many threats to the four that dissented; and the recorder, addressing himself to Mr. Bushel, said: "Sir, you are the cause of this disturbance, and manifestly show yourself an abettor of faction. I shall set a mark upon you, sir.”

Alderman sir J. Robinson, lieutenant of the tower. Mr. Bushel, I have known you near this fourteen years; you have thrust yourself upon this jury, because you think there is some service for you; I tell you, that you deserve to be indicted more than any man that hath been brought to the bar this day.

Mr. Bushel. No, sir John, there were three score before me; and I would willingly have got off, but could not.

Alderman Bludworth. Mr. Bushel, we know what you are.

Lord Mayor. Sirrah, you are an impudent fellow; I will put a mark upon you!

The jury being then sent back to consider their verdict, remained for some time; and, on their return, the clerk having asked in the usual manner: "Is William Penn guilty of the matter wherein he stands indicted, or not guilty?" the foreman replied, "Guilty of speaking in Gracious street.

Court. Is that all?

Foreman. That is all I have in commission.

Recorder. You had as good say

Lord Mayor. Was it not an unlawful assembly? You mean he was speaking to a tumult of people there?

Foreman. My lord, this was all I had in commission.

Here some of the jury seeming "to buckle to the questions of the court," Mr. Bushel, Mr. Hammond, and some others, opposed themselves, and said, "they allowed of no such terms as an unlawful assembly:" at which the lord mayor, the recorder, sir J. Robinson, lieutenant of the tower, and alderman Bludworth "took great occasion to vilifie them with most opprobrious language;" and this verdict not serving their turn, the recorder expressed himself thus: "The law of England will not allow you to part till you have given in your verdict, therefore go and consider it once more." On this the jury declared, that they had given in their verdict, and could give in no other. They withdrew, however, after demanding and obtaining pen, ink, and paper; and returning once more, at the expiration of half an hour, the foreman addressed himself to the clerk of the peace, and, presenting the following decision, said, here is our verdict: "We the jurors, hereafter named, do find William Penn to be guilty of speaking or preaching to an assembly met together in Gracious street, the 14th of August last, 1670; and that William Mead is not guilty of the said indictment. Foreman. Thomas Veer.

Edward Bushel," &c. Lord Mayor. What! will you be led by such a silly fellow as Bushel? An impudent canting fellow: I warrant you, you shall come no more upon juries in haste: you are a foreman, indeed! I thought you had understood your place better.

Recorder. Gentlemen, you shall not be dismissed till we have a verdict that the court will accept, and you shall be locked up without meat, drink, fire, and tobacco; you shall not think thus to abuse the court; we will have a verdict by the help of God, or you shall starve for it.

Penn. My jury, who are my judges, ought not to be thus menaced; their verdict should be free, and not compelled; the bench ought to wait upon [for] them, but not forestal them. I do desire that justice may be done me, and that the arbitrary resolves of the bench may not be made the measure of my jury's verdict.

Recorder. Stop that prating fellow, or put him out of the court.

Lord Mayor. You have heard that he preached, that he gathered a company of tumultuous people, and that they not only did disobey the martial power, but the civil also.

Penn. It is a great mistake; we did not make the tumult, but they that interrupted us! The jury cannot be so ignorant, as to think that we met there with a design to disturb the civil peace, since, first, we were by force of arms kept out of our lawful house, and met as near it in the street, as their soldiers would give us leave; and secondly, because it was no new thing, and it is known that we are a peaceable people, and cannot offer violence to any man. The agreement of twelve men is a verdict in law; and such a one being given by the jury, I require the clerk of the peace to record it, as he will answer at his peril. And if the jury bring in another verdict, contradictory to this, I affirm they are perjured men in law. Then looking towards them, he emphatically added, " You are Englishmen ! mind your privilege, give not away your right!”

One of the jury having pleaded indisposition, and desired to be dismissed, the lord mayor said, “You are as strong as any of them; starve then, and hold your principles."

Recorder. Gentlemen you must be contented with your hard fate, let your patience overcome it; for the court is resolved to have a verdict and that before you can be dismissed. Jury. We are agreed!

The court now swore several of

William Penn. I demand my liberty; being freed by the jury.

Lord Mayor. No, you are in for your fines, for contempt of the

court.

Penn. I ask if it be according to the fundamental laws of England, that any Englishman should be fined, or amerced, but by the judgment of his peers, or jury? since it expressly contradicts the 14th and 29th chapter of the great charter of England, which says, "No freeman ought to be amerced, but by the oath of good and lawful men of the vicinage."

Recorder. Take him away, take him away; take him out of court.

Penn. I can never urge the fundamental laws of England, but you cry, take him away, take him away! But it is now order, since the Spanish inquisition hath so great a place in the recorder's heart. God Almighty, who is just, will judge you all for these things.

So far this curious tract.

Both jury and prisoners were now forced into the Baile-Dock, for non payment of their fines, whence they were carried to Newgate. These proceedings, of course, aroused the attention of a nation, justly jealous of the government of such a profligate and arbitrary prince as Charles II. and indignant at the conduct of such a judge as Howel. Sir Thomas Smith, about a century before, had considered the fining, imprisoning, and punishing of juries, to be violent, tyrannical, and contrary to the custom of the realm of England. While the celebrated sir Matthew Hale, who had been chief baron of the exchequer, and chief justice of the king's bench, in this very reign, observed, in his Pleas of the Crown, p. 313, that it would be a most unhappy case for the judge himself, if the prisoner's fate depend

ed upon his directions, and unhappy also for the prisoner; as, if the judge's opinion must rule the verdict, the trial by jury would be

useless.

Edward Bushel, a citizen of London, whose name deserves to be handed down to posterity with ap plause, immediately sued out a writ of habeas corpus. Upon the return, it was stated, that he had been com mitted" for that, contrary to law, and against full and clear evidence openly given in court, and against the direction of the court in matter of law, he, as one of a jury, had acquitted William Penn and William Meade, to the great obstruction of justice." This cause was at length heard in the superiour court; and, after a solemn argument before the twelve judges, the above was resolved to be "an insufficient cause for fining and committing the jury." They were accordingly discharged, and they brought actions for damages.

Eleven years after this, William Penn bent the whole force of his capacious mind to a great and noble undertaking. Having, in 1681, obtained from the crown the grant of a large tract of land in America, since named Pennsylvania, after himself, as a compensation for the arrears due to him as executor to his father, he took over with him a colony of quakers, and founded Philadelphia, or the City of Brethren, in allusion to their union and fraternal affection. After thus establishing the beginnings of a future empire, and propounding a body of laws, this truly great man, who reflects so much lustre on the name of Englishman, returned to his native country, and died near Beaconsfield, in Berk shire, of an apoplexy, in 1718, at the age of seventy four.

By rhimes, seem to be meant some kind of metrical charms, and not merely love-verses, which Lysander is afterwards charged with singing by moonlight at Hermia's window. So Rosalind, in As You Like It. Act iii. Scene 6. "I was never so berhimed since Pythagoras's time, when I was an Irish rat, which I hardly remember."

The human mortals want their winter here, &c. Act II. Scene 2.

"Shakspeare, without question, wrote," says Dr. Warburton, "winter heryed," that is, praised or celebrated. The word is to be found in Spenser's Calendar. Sir Thomas Hanmer, with far superiour judgment, proposes to read "winter cheer." And Dr. Johnson, yet more happily, "wonted year," though he still thinks Titania's account confused and inconsequential; and therefore, in imitation of Scaliger's expe riment upon the Gallus of Virgil, he ventures upon a transposition of the lines, containing, it must be allowed, much display of ingenuity. There is, however, no occasion for carrying critical temerity so far. Titania enumerates the various calamities with which the earth was afflicted, in consequence of the quarrel subsisting between her and Oberon; and apparently closes the account with observing, that "the human mortals want their wonted year." She immediately adds, not by way of consequence, but as resuming the subject:

'No night is now with hymn or carol blest Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,

Pale in her anger washes all the air, And through this distemperature we see The seasons alter," &c.

That is, we are perpetually disturbed with thy brawls; therefore, our hymns and carols are neglected: therefore, the moon, the governess of floods, is offended: therefore, no longer adored, and pale in her anger, she washes all the air: therefore, the seasons alter, &c. There is hereby a regular series of deductions. Dr. J. supposes the devotion of the human, not of the fairy race, to suffer interruption; and his construction is, "Men find no winter; therefore, they sing no hymns; therefore, the moon, provoked by this omission, alters the seasons;" that is, the alteration of the seasons produces the alteration of the seasons. This is clearly erro