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The judge assumed the crowning badge of the judicial potentate the black cap; and the clerk of arraigns asked the prisoner at the bar, in the usual form, if he had anything to urge why sentence of death should not be passed upon him. Poor Harvey! I durst scarcely look at him. As the sonorous words fell on his ear, he was grasping nervously with shaking hands at the front of the dock.
Old, old scene in the history of Man the trial of his Doubt by his Faith: strange day of judgment, when one half of the human spirit arraigns and condemns the other half. Only five persons sat in that room four men and a boy. The room was of four bare walls and a blackboard, with perhaps a map or two of Palestine, Egypt, and the Roman Empire in the time of Paul.
The judge, who was waiting in his private room, was informed, and he entered the court and resumed his seat. The jury answered to their names, and then the Clerk of Arraigns, in a sing-song voice, said: "Gentlemen, have you agreed upon your verdict? Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty of wilful murder?" "Guilty!" answered the foreman, in a loud, clear voice.
The women in the galleries burst into tears. The clerk of the arraigns stood up in great disorder. "My Lord," said he, "the prisoner is very young. There are many market towns in our county. The sentence amounts to whipping once a fortnight for seven years." "If he is a young man," said Jeffreys, "he is an old rogue. Ladies, you do not know the villain as well as I do.
For an instant his eye rested upon the group of friends and well-wishers seated behind the counsel, and the faintest trace of a smile appeared on his face; but immediately he turned his eyes away and never again throughout the trial looked in our direction. The Clerk of Arraigns now rose and, reading from the indictment which lay before him on the table, addressed the prisoner
After reading the indictment, the Clerk of Arraigns turned to the prisoner: "How sayest thou, Catharine Gaunt; art thou guilty of the felony and murder whereof thou standest indicted, or not guilty?" "I am not guilty." "Culprit, how wilt thou be tried?" "Culprit I am none, but only accused. I will be tried by God and my country." "God send thee a good deliverance." Mr.
But now he has declined the straightforward and just course, avoided all proofs of guilt at the time, and after this long interval gets up to play his part withal a heap of accusation, ribaldry, and scandal. Then he arraigns me, but prosecutes the defendant.
So they jostled one another out of the room, and with composed countenances returned to the court, where they were ostentatiously conducted to their box by the sheriff's officer amid loud cries of "Silence in the court! silence there!" Their names having been called over, the Clerk of Arraigns asked the usual question, "Have you considered your verdict, gentlemen?"
He never sings more loftily, or with stronger passion, or with finer thought, than when he arraigns and denounces priestcraft and its superstitions before the bar of humanity and truth. The reception of Mr. Thomsons poems and essays affords another sign of the progress of Freethought.
Then, turning to the Clerk of Arraigns, he added, "I will attend here on Monday and try the case again with a different jury." This was against the ordinary rule of the court, and the sessions had to be prolonged into the next week for our sakes; but his lordship could not deny himself the luxury of sentencing us. He had set his heart on sending us to gaol, and would not be baulked.
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