Just before sentence given, the judge said to one of the prisoners, there was a way to escape the penalty, viz. Submission. And being asked, what that was? the judge answered, ‘To come to common prayer, and refrain these meetings.’ The prisoner giving reasons for refusal of both, the judge said, ‘Then you must abjure the land.’ ‘Abjure,’ returned the prisoners, is ‘forswear.’ To which one of the justices said laughingly, ‘And ye cannot swear at all.’ Just as if it were but jest, thus to treat religious men. But they had signified already to the jury, that they must rather die than do so. How long they were kept prisoners, and how released, I could not learn; but this I know, that many in the like cases have been long kept in jail, till sometimes they were set at liberty by the king’s proclamation.
In this year it was the share of John Crook, (who himself once had been a justice,) to be taken out of a meeting at London in John’s street, as hath been said already, by one Miller, though not in office. And he with others was brought to his trial in the said city, before the lord mayor of London, the recorder of the same, the chief justice Forster, and other judges and justices, among whom was also Richard Brown.
Now since J. Crook published this trial in print, and by that we may judge, as ex ungue leonem, of other trials of the Quakers, I will give it here at large.
J. Crook being brought to the sessions house in the Old Bailey, with two of his friends, viz. Isaac Gray, doctor of physic, and John Bolton goldsmith: one of the prisoners was called to the bar, and then asked by the
Chief Judge. What meeting was that you were at?
Prisoner. I desire to be heard, where is my accuser?
Ch. Judge. Your tongue is not your own, and you must not have liberty to speak what you list.
Pris. I speak in the presence and fear of the everlasting God, that my tongue is not my own, for it is the Lord’s, and to be disposed of according to his pleasure, and not to speak my own words; and therefore I desire to be heard: I have been so long in prison——then he was interrupted by the judge.
Judge. Leave your canting; and commanded him to be taken away, which he was accordingly, by the jailer. This was the substance of what the prisoner aforesaid spoke the first time.
C. Judge. Call John Crook to the bar; which the crier did accordingly, he being amongst the felons as aforesaid.