e confess ourselves to be so far from
recanting or declining to vindicate the assembling of ourselves, to
preach, pray, or worship the eternal, holy, just God, that we declare to
all the world, that we do believe it to be our indispensable duty to
meet incessantly on so good an account; nor shall all the powers upon
earth be able to divert us from reverencing and adoring the God who made
us." He then asked the Court to tell him upon what law the indictment
and proceedings were founded. The Recorder answering, the common law,
Penn requested him to tell him what law that was; for if it was common,
it must be easy to define it. But the Recorder refused to tell him,
saying it was _lex non scripta_, and it was not to be expected that he
could say at once what it was, for some had been thirty or forty years
studying it. Penn observed that Lord Coke had declared that common law
was common right, and common right the great chartered privileges
confirmed by former Kings. The Recorder, greatly excited, told him he
was a troublesome fellow, and it was not to the honor of the Court to
suffer him to go on; but Penn calmly insisted that the Court was bound
to explain to the prisoners at their bar the law they had violated, and
upon which they were being tried; and he told them plainly that, unless
they did so, they were violating the chartered rights of Englishmen, and
acting upon an arbitrary determination to sacrifice those rights to
their own illegal designs. Whereupon the Mayor and Recorder ordered him
to be turned into the bail-dock. William Penn,--"These are but so many
vain exclamations; is this justice or true judgment? Must I, therefore,
be taken away because I plead for the fundamental laws of England?"
Then, addressing himself to the jury, he said: "However, this I leave
upon your consciences who are of the jury, and my sole judges, that if
these ancient fundamental laws which relate to liberty and property, and
are not limited to particular persuasions in matters of religion, must
not be indispensably maintained and observed, who can say he hath a
right to the coat upon his back. Certainly our liberties are openly to
be invaded, our children enslaved, our families ruined, and our estates
led away in triumph, by every sturdy beggar and malicious informer, as
their trophies, but our pretended forfeits for conscience' sake. The
Lord of heaven and earth will be judge between us in this matter." The
hearing of this emphatic spee