Layer was put in close confinement in the Tower; even his clerks were placed in the custody of messengers; and his wife was brought to town from Dover in custody. Previous to his trial, his passage from the Tower to Whitehall, where the Secretaries of State and the Committee of Council sat to interrogate him, was one of the sights of London. The state prisoner was conveyed in a carriage, surrounded by warders, and preceded and followed by detachments of foot guards. With similar solemnity he was carried down to Romford, to plead, after a true bill had been found against him; and then followed, but not immediately, the last struggle for life. [Sidenote: _ANTAGONISTIC LAWYERS._] The case was carried to the Court of King’s Bench, on the 21st of October, 1722. The accused traitor was brought into court, heavily chained and fettered. Threats from loyal Whigs assailed him as he staggered beneath his clanking burthen through Westminster Hall. A cowardly fellow shouted that Layer, or the plot, must die! Two or three men, waiting to be summoned on the jury, declared that, if called, they would hang him! He mentioned these insults in court, and he asked that he might be allowed to stand free of the grievous bonds which oppressed him. He would then have his reason clearer, and he might hope for ‘a fair and tender trial.’ Chief Justice Pratt promised him ‘a fair and just one,’ but would not order his bonds to be unloosed. The Attorney-General, Raymond, said, ‘He has as much liberty as is allowed to prisoners who have tried to escape.’ Yorke, the Solicitor-General, declared that Layer’s complaints were only made to excite sympathy. Pratt agreed with both gentlemen. Hungerford, Layer’s chief counsel, protested that this was the first case of a prisoner from the Tower coming loaded with irons to plead; and Kettleby, also on his side, maintained that Layer had a right to stand unshackled before he pleaded to the charge against his life. This latter barrister tempered his boldness with a little servility. ‘Having been appointed by your lordship to defend the prisoner, I will not apologize for the course I take.’ This was one way of begging the court to excuse that course. Layer, in pitiful state from painful organic suffering, which was aggravated by his heavy load of chains, was compelled to stand. The sympathising ‘gentleman gaoler’ held up his captive’s bonds in his own hands, to save him from fainting. The charge was then read in Latin, and Kettleby argued its worthlessness, if not in law, in the badness of its Latin. ‘It is Latin,’ he said, ‘that may go down in Westminster Hall, but it would not in Westminster School.’ Similar pointed remarks came up at the close of long――very long――winded discussions, to which Sergeant Pengelly, for the Crown, replied by expressing his suspicion that Kettleby’s objections, made with such pomp and ceremony, probably meant something else than mere quashing of the indictment; upon which