The baffled and beaten bench, now losing temper, ordered the jury to be locked up, and the prisoners to be taken back to Newgate. Penn, now addressing them, required the clerk of the peace to record their verdict. “If, after this,” he exclaimed, “the jury bring in a different verdict to this, I affirm that they are perjured men. You are Englishmen,” he said, turning to the jurors. “Remember your privileges. Give not away your rights!”
The following day was Sunday. They were called up, however, and the clerk again inquired if they were agreed. The foreman replied as before, “Guilty of speaking to an assembly in Gracechurch Street.”
“To an unlawful assembly?” exclaimed the Lord Mayor.
“No, my lord,” answered the noble Master Bushel. “We give no other verdict than we gave last night.”
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!”