II. BE IT THEREFORE ENACTED, That the said William Preston, Robert Adams, junior, James Callaway and Charles Lynch, and all other persons whatsoever, concerned in suppressing the said conspiracy, or in advising, issuing, or executing any orders, or measures taken for that purpose, stand indemnified and exonerated of and from all pains, penalties, prosecutions, actions, suits, and damages, on account thereof. And that if any indictment, prosecution, action, or suit, shall be laid or brought against them, or any of them, for any act or thing done therein, the defendant, or defendants may plead in bar, or the general issue, and give this act in evidence.”[44] “The proceedings in Bedford, which the legislature thus pronounced to be illegal, but justifiable, were imitated in other parts of the State, and came to be known by the name of Lynch’s Law. In justice to Colonel Lynch, it should be remembered that his action was taken at a time when the State was in the throes of a hostile invasion. The General Court, before which the conspirators should have been tried, was temporarily dispersed. Thomas Jefferson, then the governor of the State, was proving himself peculiarly incompetent to fill the position. The whole executive department was in a state of partial paralysis. It was, therefore, no spirit of insubordination or disregard of the law that induced Lynch to act as he did. There were few men living more inclined than this simple Quaker farmer to render due respect in word and deed to the established authorities.”[45] The old walnut tree on which lynch-law is said to have been first administered was still standing, in 1900,[46] on the lawn of the Lynch homestead, two miles from the village of Lynch Station on the Southern Railway. A part of it was dead but the rest was still vigorous and bore its annual crop of nuts. The death penalty, however, was never inflicted under its shadow. Some say that the Quaker proclivities of “Judge Lynch”[47] prevented him from passing sentence of death; others say that it was due to his native sense of humanity. Mr. Page presents some evidence showing that “both custom and sentiment were violently opposed to visiting capital punishment upon the detected Tory conspirators.”[48]