After Mr. Recorder’s departure it was moved that the protest should be entered. To which it was answered that the protest could not be entered without entering also the order, and that it was not fit to take any notice of it; and therefore it was proposed that no notice should be taken in their books of either, which was unanimously agreed to by the court.
The sheriff then moved that the court would direct their whipper to perform the said order. To which it was answered that as he was an official of the Corporation they would give no such order. Soon after the court adjourned, and did not attend the burning of the papers.
Afterwards, about noon, the sheriff, after reading the numbers of the several papers which were ordered to be burned, delivered them into the hands of his own Negro and ordered him to put them into the fire, which he did. Mr. Recorder and several of the officers of the garrison attended.
On the Lord’s Day, November 17, 1734, I was taken and imprisoned by virtue of a warrant in these words:
“At a Council held at Fort George in New York, November 2, 1734. Present: His Excellency William Cosby, Captain General and Governor in Chief, Mr. Clarke, Mr. Harison, Mr. Livingston, Mr. Kennedy, the Chief Justice, Mr. Cortlandt, Mr. Lane, Mr. Horsmanden.
“It is ordered that the sheriff for the City of New York do forthwith take and apprehend John Peter Zenger for printing and publishing several seditious libels dispersed throughout his journals or newspapers, entitled The New York Weekly Journal; as having in them many things tending to raise factions and tumults among the people of this Province, inflaming their minds with contempt of His Majesty’s government, and greatly disturbing the peace thereof. And upon his taking the said John Peter Zenger, to commit him to the prison or common jail of the said city and county.”
And being by virtue of that warrant so imprisoned in the jail, I was for several days denied the use of pen, ink and paper, and the liberty of speech with any persons.
[Zenger’s lawyers, James Alexander and William Smith, got a habeas corpus, and then argued before the court that their client had a right to reasonable bail. In support of their case they appealed to English law and precedent.]
Sundry other authorities and arguments were produced and insisted on by my counsel to prove my right to be admitted to moderate bail, and to such bail as was in my power to give. Sundry parts of history they produced to show how much the requiring of excessive bail had been resented by Parliament. And in order to enable the court to judge what surety was in my power to give, I made affidavit that (my debts paid) I was not worth forty pounds (the tools of my trade and wearing apparel excepted).
Some warm expressions (to say no worse of them) were dropped on this occasion, sufficiently known and resented by the listeners, which for my part I desire may be buried in oblivion. In the end it was ordered that I might be admitted to bail, myself in 400 pounds with two sureties, each in 200 pounds, and that I should be remanded till I gave it.