“The king (says _Rapin_,) passionately wished to be revenged of this lord, who for sometime had shown him little regard: To this end he granted a special commission of Oyer and Terminer to all the judges of the kingdom to sit, the 24th of November, with the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, at the Old Baily, on the Earl’s trial. Eight witnesses were heard against him, who deposed upon oath many things from his own mouth, which discovered pernicious designs against the king’s person. But the greatest crime objected against him was, the copy (or plan) of an _Assosiation_ (found in his study) against the enemies of the king, of the protestant religion, and of their country. But notwithstanding the hopes conceived by the Court, of being freed from this enemy, the Grand Jury, consisting of one and twenty of the principal citizens of London, considering that the paper containing the association was only a copy, and not writ in the earl of Shaftsbury’s hand, and observing very great improbabilities in the depositions of the witnesses, found no sufficient ground for the Bill, and returned it _Ignoramus_. Immediately the whole city testified their joy for the earl’s deliverance, by bonfires in all the Streets, and other marks of satisfaction; and the witnesses against him were in great danger of being torn in pieces by the mob.” {837} Arbitrary and vindictive as these proceedings of the Court were, they appear to have been entirely approved of by our corporation. Of the conduct and principles of Shaftsbury and the country party they evidently had no opinion. They were ready to condemn them without hesitation and without mercy: and as to the very idea of an _association_ to counteract or check the tyrannical measures of the Court, it was looked upon by them as truly horrid and detestable. Yet it was to something of that kind, a few years after, that we owed our glorious revolution, our deliverance from popish superstition and despotism, and the establishment of civil and religious liberty. {838} This Corporation afterwards seemed no less pleased with the proceedings of William and the revolutionists than they had been before with those of Charles and his cabal, or of James and his popish counsellors: and had the pretender succeeded in 1715, or in 1745, they would probably have been as joyful on that, as they had been on any former occasion, and addressed the new sovereign with a zeal no way inferior to what they had expressed or manifested towards the most favoured and patriotic of his predecessors. In short, like most corporations, their conduct would have been regulated by circumstances or self interest, rather than by truth or genuine patriotism.