This, of course, gave Butler greater licence than ever. His fiendish persecutions had received a sort of semi-official sanction, and were carried on with the greatest gusto. Even as late as February, 1750, ten months after the outrages first commenced, we find him and his friends entering the house of William Jewell, breaking his windows, beating his wife, and swearing that they would blow out his brains if he offered the least resistance. Mary Philips was abused in the grossest terms, was struck on the head, and narrowly escaped an untimely death. Elizabeth Gardelet, a soldier’s wife, was met by Butler and his rabble; and, without any provocation, the brute struck her with both his fists, and beat her head against a wall. On escaping from him, he pursued her and struck her in the face. Running into a school-yard for shelter, he vociferated, “You whore, you stand on consecrated ground;” threw her across the lane; knocked her down backwards; and otherwise so ill treated her as to occasion her miscarriage. Several depositions, to this effect, were laid before the grand jury of the Lent assizes; but, like those at the assizes preceding, were all rejected. A true bill, however, was found against Daniel Sullivan for discharging a pistol, without a ball, over the heads of Butler and his mob, while they were pelting him with stones. Several of the preachers, presented as vagabonds in autumn, appeared at these assizes, and were ordered into the dock of common criminals. Butler was the first witness against them. The judge, looking at him with a suspicious eye, asked what his calling was. The worthless fellow hung down his head, and sheepishly replied, “I sing ballads, my lord.” The judge lifted up his hands in surprise, and said, “Here are six gentlemen,” (so he was pleased to style them,) “indicted as vagabonds, and the first accuser is a vagabond by profession.” A second witness, being called, was asked the same question. He impudently answered, “I am an anti-swaddler, my lord.” The judge resented the insolence, and ordered the buffoon out of court. Then turning to the jury, he reprimanded the corporation and others, for suffering such a vagrant as Butler to be the ringleader of a rabble, who had committed such atrocious outrages upon so many of the peaceable and respectable inhabitants of the city; and declared that it was an insult to the court to bring such a case before him. The abettors of this infamous persecution were put to shame, and Butler was discarded; but the riots, as we shall see in the next chapter, were still continued.