Many of the justices, and the generality of the people, were moderate and civil; and John Ashley, a lawyer, was very friendly, both the time before and now, speaking on my behalf, and pleading the errors of the indictment for me; but Justice Street, who was the judge of the court, would not regard, but overruled all. This Justice Street said to some Friends in the morning before my trial, “that if he had been upon the bench the first sessions, he would not have tendered me the oath; but if I had been convicted of being at a conventicle, he would have proceeded against me according to that law; and that he was sorry that ever I came before him;” and yet he maliciously tendered the oath to me in the court again, when I was to have tried my traverse upon the indictment. But the Lord pleaded my cause, and met with both him and Justice Simpson, who first ensnared me with the oath at the first sessions; for Simpson’s son was arraigned not long after, at the same bar, for murder. And Street, who, as he came down from London, after the judges had returned me back from the King’s Bench to Worcester, said, “Now I was returned to them, I should lie in prison and rot,” had his daughter, whom he so doted on that she was called his idol, brought dead from London in a hearse, to the same inn where he spoke those words, and brought to Worcester to be buried within a few days after. People took notice of the hand of God, how sudden it was upon him; but it rather hardened than tendered him, as his conduct afterwards showed. After I was returned to prison, several came to see me; and amongst others, the Earl of Salisbury’s son, who was very loving, and troubled that they had dealt so wickedly by me. He stayed about two hours with me, and took a copy of the errors in the indictment in writing. The sessions being now over, and I fixed in prison by a premunire, my wife came out of the North to be with me; and the assizes coming on, in the sixth month, the state of my case being drawn up in writing, she and Thomas Lower delivered it to Judge Wild. In it were set forth the occasion of my journey; the manner of my being taken and imprisoned; the proceedings of the several sessions against me; and the errors in the indictment by which I was premunired. When the judge had read it, he shook his head, and said, “we might try the validity or invalidity of the errors, if we would;” and that was all they could get from him. While I lay in prison, it came upon me to state our principle to the king; not with particular relation to my own sufferings, but for his better information concerning our principle, and us as a people. “TO THE KING.