The disposition of the Government towards Protestant Dissenters appears in the trial of Richard Baxter. Three weeks after the King’s accession, this distinguished minister was committed to the King’s Bench, for a Paraphrase on the New Testament, which he published. On the 18th of May, being then unwell, he moved for an allowance of further time, in order to prepare his defence; but in reply to this very reasonable application, Jeffreys, the Chief Justice, who by his behaviour on the Bench whilst trying the venerable prisoner, has secured for himself everlasting infamy, savagely growled out, “I will not give him a minute’s time more, to save his life.” “Yonder stands Oates in the pillory, and he says he suffers for the truth, and so says Baxter; but if Baxter did but stand on the other side of the pillory with him, I would say, two of the greatest rogues and rascals in the kingdom stood there.”[144] Twelve days afterwards, Baxter appeared at the bar in Guildhall, with his friends Sir Henry Ashurst, Dr. Bates, Dr. Sharp, and Dr. Moore[145] attending by his side; when Jeffreys indulged in that coarse, vulgar, and well-known rhetoric, a single specimen of which is sufficient for our purpose. “What ailed the old blockhead, the unthankful villain, that he would not conform? Was he wiser or better than other men? He hath been ever since, the spring of the faction. I am sure he hath poisoned the world with his linsey-woolsey doctrine. Hang him! this one old fellow hath cast more reproach upon the constitution and discipline of our Church, than will be wiped off this hundred years; but I’ll handle him for it; for, by God, he deserves to be whipped through the City.” [Sidenote: 1685.] An eye-witness states, that during this abuse, he himself could but smile sometimes,--notwithstanding his own tears, and those of others,--when he saw the Judge imitate “our modern pulpit drollery,” and drive “on furiously, like Hannibal over the Alps, with fire and vinegar, pouring all the contempt and scorn upon Baxter, as if he had been a link-boy or knave.”[146] After the Judge had secured a verdict from the Jury, the prisoner wrote a letter to the Bishop of London, to intercede in his behalf. Whether the latter complied with this request, we do not know; but there is reason to believe that Jeffreys wished to see the Puritan whipped at the cart-tail, and that the prevention of the punishment is to be attributed to the interference of his brother Justices, who might well think it mad and brutal to treat after such a fashion a man of the highest reputation, and one who had declined a mitre. But the aged Divine did not escape being fined five hundred marks, and condemned to imprisonment until he paid the sum. As he declined to do it, he remained in the King’s Bench until the 24th of November, 1686, when he obtained release by warrant, upon giving sureties for his good behaviour. [Sidenote: REBELLION.]