These two sheriffs first set the example of packing juries, when persons were to be tried for party offences; for they took the task of settling the pannels for juries out of the Compters into their own hands, and left the secondaries of the Compters, who had usually discharged that duty, only to return the lists, thus previously made up. In Middlesex, they had the assistance of Goodenough, the under-sheriff, a bustling and active partizan, who very narrowly escaped being hanged for the Rye-house Plot. By this selection of jurymen, the sheriffs insured a certainty of casting such bills as might be presented to the Grand Jury against any of their partizans. This practice was so openly avowed, that Settle has ventured to make it a subject of eulogy:
Next Hethriel write Baal's watchful foe, and late
Jerusalem's protecting magistrate;
Who, when false jurors were to frenzy charmed,
And, against innocence, even tribunals armed,
Saw depraved justice ope her ravenous maw,
And timely broke her canine teeth of law.
The Earl of Shaftesbury himself reaped the advantage of this manœuvre; which, from the technical word employed in the return of these bills, was called Ignoramus. Stephen Colledge, the Protestant joiner, also experienced the benefit of a packed jury, though concerned in all the seditious practices of the time. He was afterwards tried, condemned, and executed at Oxford, where he was out of the magic circle of the sheriff's protection; and, though I believe the man deserved to die, he certainly at last met with hard measure. His death was supposed to have broke the talisman of Ignoramus, and was considered as a triumph by the Tories, who, for a long time, had been unable to persuade a jury to find for the king.[323] When Lord Stafford was most unjustly condemned, Bethel and his brother sheriff affected a barbarous scruple, whether the king was entitled to commute the statutory punishment of high treason into simple decapitation. The House of Commons ordered that the king's writ be obeyed. This hard-hearted conduct was an indulgence of their republican humour. Shortly after, Mr Bethel was found guilty of a riot and assault upon one of the king's watermen at the election of members of parliament for Southwark, 5th October, 1681. This person being active in the poll, Mr Bethel caned him, and told him he would have his coat (the king's livery) stripped over his ears. For this he was fined five merks. Bethel, notwithstanding his violence, was so fortunate as to escape the business of the Rye-house Plot. His brother sheriff, Cornish, was not so fortunate: He was a plain republican, and highly esteemed by Lord Russell, for having treated with indifference the apprehension of the Tower firing on the city, saying, they could only demolish a few chimneys. He was executed as an accomplice in the Rye-house conspiracy, upon the evidence of that very Goodenough, who had been his tool in packing the illegal juries; so that his death seemed a retribution for dishonouring and perverting the course of justice. James II. was afterwards satisfied that Cornish had been unjustly executed, and restored his estate to his family.
Yet Corah, thou shalt from oblivion pass;