William Penn, though freed, has demonstrated no…
September 1670 CE
William Penn, though freed, has demonstrated no remorse for his aggressive stance and vowed to keep fighting against the wrongs of the Church and the King.
The Crown for its part continued to confiscate Quaker property and put thousands of Quakers in jail.
Penn's religious views from this point on effectively exile him from English society; he is sent down (expelled) from Christ Church, Oxford for being a Quaker, and arrested several times.
Among the most famous of these is the trial following his 1670 arrest with William Meade.
Penn is accused of preaching before a gathering in the street, which Penn had deliberately provoked in order to test the validity of the new law against assembly.
Penn pleads for his right to see a copy of the charges laid against him and the laws he has supposedly broken, but the judge (the Lord Mayor of London) refuses—even though this right is guaranteed by the law.
Furthermore, the judge directs the jury to come to a verdict without hearing the defense.
Despite heavy pressure from the Lord Mayor to convict Penn, the jury returns a verdict of "not guilty".
When invited by the judge to reconsider their verdict and to select a new foreman, they refuse and are sent to a cell over several nights to mull over their decision.
The Lord Mayor then tells the jury, "You shall go together and bring in another verdict, or you shall starve", and not only had Penn sent to jail in loathsome Newgate Prison (on a charge of contempt of court), but the full jury follows him, and they are additionally fined the equivalent of a year’s wages each.
The members of the jury, fighting their case from prison in what becomes known as Bushel's Case, manage to win the right for all English juries to be free from the control of judges.
This case is one of the more important trials that are to shape the future concept of American freedom and is a victory for the use of the writ of habeas corpus as a means of freeing those unlawfully detained.