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On William Penn's trial | | |
Introduction | |
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< | I was led into the survey of William Penn's trial by this dramatic conversation about Penn's hat. For a US law student who just had a summer intern in a Federal District Court, such "saucy" conversation in a "high-crime" trial is unimaginable and definitely amusing, therefore I decided to dive deeper into it and here in this short article I present some of my research results and thoughts. There is much to be said about this milestone trial. The central question this article wants to shed some light on is what contributed to the acquittal of William Penn, when most other trials of Quakers ended up with guilty verdict and imprisonment. I will start with a background section about why Quakers like William Penn are being persecuted and how they are facing the tyranny of Judges who dictate the jury's verdict. Then I will briefly describe Penn's trial and put in parallel some other trials from 1660-1670 in comparison. In the analysis section, I will try to explain some reasons I found convincing, including the crown's attitude, theoretical foundation laid by Quakers, and most importantly, the conscience of the jurors and the charisma of Penn. I think in the end, what I learned from this researching project is the importance of every individual juror; although we always focus on a jury as a whole, we should keep in mind that it is made of individual human beings, that each one's conscience matters. | >
> | I was led into the survey of William Penn's trial by this dramatic conversation about Penn's hat. For a US law student who just had a summer intern in a Federal District Court, such "saucy" conversation in a "high-crime" trial is unimaginable and definitely amusing, therefore I decided to dive deeper into it and here in this short article, I present some of my research results and thoughts. There is much to be said about this milestone trial. The central question this article wants to shed some light on is what contributed to the acquittal of William Penn, when most other trials of Quakers ended up with guilty verdict and imprisonment. I will start with a background section about why Quakers like William Penn are being persecuted and how they are facing the tyranny of Judges who dictate the jury's verdict. Then I will briefly describe Penn's trial and put in comparison some other trials from 1660-1670. In the analysis section, I will try to explain some reasons I found convincing, including the crown's attitude, the 1theoretical foundation laid by Quakers, and most importantly, the conscience of the jurors and the charisma of Penn. I think in the end, what I learned from this researching project is the importance of every individual juror; although we always focus on a jury as a whole, we should keep in mind that it is made of individual human beings, that each one's conscience matters. | | |
Background | |
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< | It shouldn't be too surprising that Quakers as Nonconformists are not so popular in the eyes of legal enforcement. However, I think it will be helpful to start this article with some additional background knowledge about why, more specifically, were Quakers prosecuted so often. The first reason, as shown in the excerpt, is that Quakers are unwilling to take off their hats in the court. Trivial it may appear now, such behavior could be intolerable in 17th century England. It was a social customary at that time that people would doff their hats to acknowledge others passing by, and not wearing the hat in a church or court, particularly not in the presence of superiors. Quakers, due to their religious beliefs that I will not explain more here, did not follow those customs; they use dress simply, use words like "thou" and "thee" casually, and refuse to take off their hats in front of any judge or magistrate. While Charles II may tolerate William Penn's hat by taking off his own and tease that only one person may wear a hat in the palace, most authorities did not take such acts lightly. To authorities, such actions were not simply innocent eccentricity, as they have historically stand for a social protest. The feeling of being disrespected and the concern of social disturbances as Quakers group grew was therefore a big reason why Quakers were so unpopular among Judges and other law enforcement. | >
> | It shouldn't be too surprising that Quakers as Nonconformists are not so popular in the eyes of legal enforcement. However, I think it will be helpful to start this article with some additional background knowledge about why, more specifically, were Quakers prosecuted so often. The first reason, as shown in the excerpt, is that Quakers are unwilling to take off their hats in the court. Trivial it may appear now, such behavior could be intolerable in 17th century England. It was a social customary at that time that people would doff their hats to acknowledge others passing by, and not wearing the hat in a church or court, particularly not in the presence of superiors. Quakers, due to their religious beliefs that I will not explain more here, did not follow those customs; they use dress simply, use words like "thou" and "thee" casually, and refuse to take off their hats in front of any judge or magistrate. While Charles II may tolerate William Penn's hat by taking off his own and tease that only one person may wear a hat in the palace, most authorities did not such behaviors lightly. To authorities, such actions were not simply innocent eccentricity, as they have historically stand for a social protest. The feeling of being disrespected and the concern of potential social disturbances as Quakers group grew was therefore a big reason why Quakers were so unpopular among Judges and other law enforcement. | | | | |
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> | However, Quakers were certainly not being widely persecuted because of their eccentric behaviors alone. Quakers' belief in the inner light led to some other actions that are more directly against law, including refusal to take an oath and preaching on the streets. The most trouble-causing action is Quakers' insistence in holding their own meetings. For Quakers, meetings for their worship are essential for spreading the words of the Light and for providing the support each Quaker needs. They also insist these meetings be public so that they serve both as a means to encourage new converts and as a witness to their faith. Such public meeting and preaching of the idea that each one has his own connection to God is certainly beyond unwelcome. The persecution of Quakers began with the 1662 Quaker Act and reached its height in 1664 when Parliament passed the Conventicle Act, the legal basis on which most indictments to Quakers were based. The Act was designed to prevent and suppress seditious conventicles under the pretense of religion, making most nonconformists' meeting unlawful. | | | | |
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> | Now we know why Quakers are being prosecuted, another background point I want to make is the tyranny of law Quakers were facing at that time. Whether Quakers' meetings were really against the Conventicle Act was actually a controversial question. The Act's preamble by the Parliament declared that the act was designed to prevent "seditious" conventicles, but the texts of the Act proscribed meetings "under pretense or colour of religion", which does not include the word "seditious". The bench took the Act literally; instructions given by Judges state that a conviction does not require proof of a seditious purpose, which is presumed by the law. Jury should be able to give a verdict with the evidence that defendants were at an assembly unless they can prove such meeting was not under the color of religion or not nonconformist. We can see this from Judge Orlando Bridgeman's instruction in 1664 Hertford summer assizes:"[You] are not to expect a plain, punctual evidence against them for anything they said or did at their meeting... [I]f you find, or believe in your hearts that they were in the meeting, under colour of religion in their way, though they sat still only, and looked upon each other, seeing they cannot say what they did there, it was an unlawful meeting...And you must find the bill, for you must have respect to the meaning and intent of the law..." Friends, as you can imagine, plead the jury to consider the true intent of the Act. In a tract named Jury-man charged, Quakers gave their legal defense. "The intention of the Parliament is manifest from the title and preface of the Act: the title, an Act to prevent and suppress seditious conventicles: but what sedition in worshiping God?" Quakers urged the jury against the instruction that verdict can be given with proof of religious meeting alone, as that will in effect give the Judge the power to decide whether the meeting was seditious. "But will this satisfy you sir? Can you take a passionate and testy judge's word as your infalliable director in so many most difficult controversies as must in this cas be decided? Will you pin your faith upon the judge's sleeve in matters of religion (of which perhaps he knows no more than he can find in the statute book)?"
While Quakers could defend themselves with the pen and make all the legal arguments against the bench, in trials they could only bear the tyranny of the judges. At a time when there was no appeal procedure and no fine or other punishment for Judge's misconduct, Judges' enjoyed a dictating power. We can already get a taste of how tyrannical a Judge can be from the excerpt, when the Judge literally ordered the hat to be put on Penn's head and then fined him for contempt of the court. Such a trick was actually a common practice; in a more outrageous case, Judge Hyde did the same thing to a Quaker who was simply standing by and hearing the trial; after perceiving him to be a Quaker, Judge Hide ordered to bring the man to the bar with the hat off, ordered the hat to be put on, then fined the man for contempt of the court for not taking off his hat. What really needs to be stressed is judges' dictation over the jury. Although the instruction given by a judge can be questioned as we see above, although some jurors may entertain serious doubt about whether the defendant Quakers' meeting was against the Conventicle Act, in most if not all Quakers trials Judge will dictate jurors to give a guilty verdict with the threat to starve them or fine them. In the next section I will present Penn's and some other tirals in a fuller picture, but it is important to know as background knowledge that in most Quaker trials, Judges would force the jury to give a guilty verdict. | | | |
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