In the summer of 1724 a Protestant of Thorn refused to lift his hat when a Catholic procession passed, and he was assaulted by a pupil of the Jesuit college. The Protestant authorities arrested the Catholic for assault, and a riot occurred, in the course of which the Jesuit college was stormed and destroyed. The royal authority was now invoked, and the Mayor, Vice-Mayor, and nine other citizens of Thorn were arraigned before the High Court at Warsaw for failing to prevent the destruction of the college. A Jesuit was permitted, in the presence of the judges, to deliver a violently inflammatory sermon on the outrage, and the unfortunate men were condemned to death. A singular clause was added to the sentence: it must not be carried out until a Jesuit and six members of the Polish nobility swore to the guilt of the accused. We know from their own words that the judges trusted in this way to save the accused from the vengeance of the Jesuits. They persuaded the Papal Nuncio to press the Jesuit superior not to send one of his subjects to take the oath, and, when a Jesuit appeared nevertheless at the appointed time, to swear away the lives of the innocent men, they pointed out that a priest could not canonically take any action which would lead to an execution. The Jesuits placidly replied that they had sent a "lay coadjutor," instead of a priest, to take the oath. It is true that, once they had sealed the fate of the men, they entered a plea for mercy, but we are familiar with this hypocritical phrase in the annals of the Inquisition. They tried moreover, at a later date, to lessen the guilt of their conduct by mendaciously stating that the Nuncio's letter arrived too late for consideration: an audacious untruth, since we have the Jesuits' reply to the Nuncio, and we know that the judges reminded them of the Nuncio's intervention before the oath was taken.