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WilliamPennTrial 9 - 12 Nov 2019 - Main.DaihuiMeng
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On William Penn's trial (Test Wiki page) | | |
- Wagstaffe's Case (Rex v. Wagstaffe, 83 Eng. Rep. 1328)
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< | Reference found | >
> | Reference | | |
- Thomas Green, Verdict According to Conscience
- Thomas Green, Lights Hidden Under Bushel's Case
- Craig Horle, The Quakers and the English Legal System 1660-1688
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- Kelyng, John, Sir, A report of divers cases in pleas of the crown, adjudged and determined in the reign of the late King Charles II.
- The Reports and Arguments of that learned Judge Sir John Vaughn
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< | Other Reference on the list | >
> | Other Reference | | |
- Joseph Besse, A Collection of the Sufferings of...Quakers, from ... [1650 to 1689].
(https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t7fr05209&view=1up&seq=305&size=125)
- Alexnder Scherr, The Genesis of Bushell's Case: John Vaughan and Legal Change (Can't find it)
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- William Penn, Joseph Besse edit., A collection of the works of William Penn (2 vols) (Read in Burke special collection)
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William Penn's Trial
Clerk. Bring William Penn and William Mead to the bar.
Mayor. Sirrah, who bid you put off their hats? put on their hats again.
Obser. Whereupon one of the officers putting the prisoners hats upon their heads (pursuant to the order of the court) brought them to the bar.
Record. Do you know where you are?
Penn. Yes.
Record. Do not you know it is the king's court,
Penn. I know it to be a court, and I suppose it to be the king's court.
Record. Do you not know there is respect due to the court?
Penn. Yes.
Record. Why do you not pay it then?
Penn. I do so.
Record. Why do you not pull off your hat then?
Penn. Because I do not believe that to be any respect.
Record. Well, the court sets forty marks a piece upon your heads, as a fine for your contempt of the court.
Penn. I desire it might be observed, that, we came into the court with our hats off (that is, taken off,) and if they have been put on since, it was by order from the bench; and therefore not we, but the bench should be fined.
Mead. I have a question, to ask the Recorders am I fined also?
Record. Yes.
Mead. I desire the Jury, and all people to take notice of this injustice of the recorder: Who spake to me to pull off my hat? and yet hath he put a fine upon my head. O fear the Lord, and dread his power, and yield to the guidance of his holy spirit, for he is not far from every one of you."_
Introduction
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 jurors; although we always focus on jury as a whole, we should keep in mind that it is made of individual human beings, that each one's conscience matters.
| | | Potentially useful citations
- Thomas Green, Verdict
--"Restoration persecution of the Quakers began with the 1662 Quaker Act and reached its height in 1664, the year in which Parliament passed Conventicle Act, which made most nonconformist religious meetings unlawful." |
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All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
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