Part 5 (1/2)
The jury then asked for pen, ink, and paper, and the request being complied with, they again retired, returning after a brief interval with their verdict in writing. They found Penn ”guilty of speaking or preaching to an a.s.sembly met together in Gracechurch Street,” and Mead not guilty.
”Gentlemen,” said the Recorder, regarding the jury angrily, ”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, or you shall starve for it.”
Penn protested against this course, upon which the Recorder ordered the officers of the court to stop his mouth or remove him. The jury not leaving their box, the Recorder again directed them to retire and re-consider their verdict. Penn made a spirited remonstrance. ”The agreement of twelve men,” said he, ”is a verdict in law, and such a one having been 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. You are Englishmen,” he added, turning to the jury, ”mind your privilege; give not away your right.” The court then adjourned to the following morning, when the prisoners were brought to the bar, and the jury, who had been locked up all night, were sent for. They were firm of purpose, and through their foreman persisted in their verdict.
”What is this to the purpose?” demanded the Recorder, ”I will have a verdict.” Then addressing a juror, named Bushel, whom he had threatened on the previous day, he said, ”you are a factious fellow; I will set a mark on you, and whilst I have anything to do in the city, I will have an eye on you.”
Penn again protested against the jury being threatened in this manner, upon which the Lord Mayor ordered that his mouth should be stopped, and that the gaoler should bring fetters and chain him to the floor; but it does not appear that this was done. The jury were again directed to retire and bring in a different verdict, and they withdrew under protest, the foreman saying, ”We have given in our verdict, and all agreed to it; and if we give in another, it will be a force upon us to save our lives.”
According to the narrative written by Penn and Mead, and quoted in Forsyth's ”History of Trial by Jury,” this scene took place on Sunday morning, and the court adjourned again to the following day, when, unless they were supplied with food surrept.i.tiously, they must have fasted since Sat.u.r.day. The foreman gave in their verdict in writing, as before, to which they had severally subscribed their names. The clerk received it, but was prevented from reading it by the Recorder, who desired him to ask for a ”positive verdict.”
”That is our verdict,” said the foreman. ”We have subscribed to it.”
”Then hearken to your verdict,” said the clerk. ”You say that William Penn is not guilty in manner and form as he stands indicted; you say that William Mead is not guilty in manner and form as he stands indicted; and so say you all.”
The jury responded affirmatively, and their names were then called over, and each juror was commanded to give his separate verdict, which they did unanimously.
”I am sorry, gentlemen,” the Recorder then said, ”you have followed your own judgments and opinions, rather than the good and wholesome advice which was given you. G.o.d keep my life out of your hands! But for this the court fines you forty marks a man, and imprisonment till paid.”
Penn was about to leave the dock, but was prevented from doing so, upon which he said, ”I demand my liberty, being freed by the jury.”
”You are in for your fines,” the Lord Mayor told the prisoners.
”Fines, for what?” demanded Penn.
”For contempt of court,” replied the Lord Mayor.
”I ask,” exclaimed Penn, ”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 fourteenth and twenty-ninth chapters of the Great Charter of England, which say, 'No freeman ought to be amerced but by the oath of good and lawful men of the vicinage.'”
”Take him away,” cried the Recorder.
”They then,” continues the narrative, ”hauled the prisoners into the bail-dock, and from thence sent them to Newgate, for non-payment of their fines; and so were their jury. But the jury were afterwards discharged upon an _habeas corpus_, returnable in the Common Pleas, where their commitment was adjudged illegal.” Even then, judges appear to have remained unconvinced of the illegality of the practice, or stubborn in their desire to enforce their own views or wishes upon juries; for the question was not regarded as finally settled until the decision in the Court of Common Pleas was clinched, in the same year, by a similar judgment of the Court of King's Bench.
Barbarous Punishments.
BY SIDNEY W. CLARKE.
That the world has become more merciful as it has grown older, is a truism at once apparent to anyone who gives even a cursory glance at any of the numerous works dealing with the criminal laws of the olden time. Still the approach to the most excellent quality has been regretably and painfully slow, and it is surely a stain on the boasted enlightenment of the nineteenth century, that the century had run through nearly three-fourths of its existence before the terrible and vindictive punishment of drawing and quartering disappeared from our statute book. In most States the early laws have been of a blood-thirsty and fear-inspiring nature, but what excuse can be urged for the fact that until the fourth day of July, in the year of Grace 1870, the punishment ordained by law for the crime of high treason, was that the unfortunate offender should be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, there to be hanged by the neck till he be dead; that his head be severed from his body; that his body be divided into four quarters; and that his head and quarters be at the disposal of the Crown.
In Blackstone's time the sentence was still more savage, or, as the great Commentator puts it, ”very solemn and terrible.” It was that the offender be drawn to the gallows, and not be carried or walk; ”though usually,”
says Blackstone, ”by connivance, at length ripened by humanity into law, a sledge or hurdle was allowed to preserve the offender from the extreme torment of being dragged on the ground or pavement;” that he be hanged by the neck and then cut down alive; that his entrails be taken out, and burned before his eyes, while he was still alive; that his head be cut off, his body be divided into four parts, and his head and quarters be at the King's disposal. What our tender-hearted monarchs did with the quivering pieces of flesh let the stones of Temple Bar, the City Gates, and the Tower bear witness. Here are a couple of extracts from that perennial fountain of information, the diary of Mr. Samuel Pepys. Under date of October 13th, 1660, he writes, ”I went out to Charing Cross to see Major-General Harrison,” one of the regicides, ”hanged, drawn, and quartered, which was done there, _he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition_.” Note the grim humour of the words in italics. ”He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy.” Again, on October 20th, in the same year:--”This afternoon going through London and calling at Crowe's, the upholsterer's, in St. Bartholomew's, I saw the limbs of some of our new traytors set upon Aldersgate, which was a sad sight to see; and a b.l.o.o.d.y week this and the last have been, there being ten hanged, drawn, and quartered.”
It will be observed that the masculine gender is used in the foregoing sentences for high treason; for, if the offender was a woman, the law with a delicacy (!) one would hardly have expected, recognised that ”the decency due to the s.e.x forbids the exposing and publicly mutilating their bodies;” so a woman was simply to be drawn to the gallows, and there burned alive. And these punishments for treason Sir Edward c.o.ke attempted to justify on Scriptural grounds, adding ”it is punishment undoubtedly just, for our liege lord the King is lord of every one of our members, and they have severally conspired against him, and should each one suffer.” Evidently justice has not always spelt humanity.
Another of the horrible punishments decreed by English law was that of boiling to death, which in the reign of Henry VIII. was inflicted for poisoning, and recalls the most cruel tortures of China and the Orient, where slicing to death and impalement alive are or were common forms of punishment. The awful fate of being boiled alive was specially devised for the benefit of John Roose, a cook, who had been convicted of throwing poison into a pot of broth intended for the family of the Bishop of Rochester and for the poor of the Parish; in 1542, Margaret Davey suffered the same lingering death at Smithfield. So fearful were our ancestors of poison, that in Scotland, in 1601, Thomas Bellie, a burgess of Brechin, and his son were banished for life by the High Court of Justiciary, for the heinous offence of poisoning a couple of troublesome hens belonging to a neighbour. Even the laws of Draco, said on account of their severity to have been written not in ink but in blood, can scarcely compete with these examples of British barbarity.
Among the Romans strangulation, precipitation from a rocky height (a mode of carrying out the death sentence still found amongst savage tribes), and las.h.i.+ng to death were forms of punishment. Soldiers guilty of military offences had to run the gauntlet. Upon a given signal all the soldiers of the legion to which the offender belonged fell upon him with sticks and stones, and generally killed him on the spot. If, however, he succeeded in making his escape, he was thenceforth an exile from his native country.
Offending slaves were first scourged and then crucified. They were compelled to carry the cross to the place of execution, and after being suspended were left to perish by slow degrees. Crucifixion was abolished throughout the Roman Empire by Constantine, out of reverence to the sacred symbol. Other cruel punishments were burning alive, exposure to wild animals, and condemnation to fight as gladiators in the arena for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the citizens. The second of these modes of death, for death was the invariable result, was the one usually meted out to the early Christians--”If the Tiber overflows its banks; if there be a famine or plague; if there be a cold, a dry, or a scorching season; if any public calamity overtakes us; the universal cry of the people is--”To the lion with the Christians _Christiani ad leonem_!”