On the morning following the arrest of Mr. Woodburn, he was brought before the assembled bench of county magistrates. The throng collected showed the importance attached to the case. A number of men had been suddenly summoned from Woodburn, and brought up in post-chaises. George Woodburn, assisted by Sir Henry Clavering, had also collected a number of men and women who had been engaged in both hayfields at the time, and had also brought Mrs. and Miss Woodburn, overwhelmed with grief as they were. There was a formidable array of the Rockville, Bullockshed and Tenterhook section of the magistracy on the bench, for Sir Benjamin Bullockshed, whose steward Mr. Drury had become, had taken up the matter as a personal one, and had not hesitated to say amongst his particular friends, that he would make an example of Mr. Woodburn, who was a stiff, impracticable man, and a stout adherent of the Degge and pauper clique. Had this speech reached Sir Henry Clavering, he and Simon Degge would have insisted that Sir Benjamin should not occupy a place on the bench on this occasion. Able lawyers were engaged on each side. To make a short story of the proceedings, some of Mr. Woodburn’s own men were brought forward to prove that he had expressed a wish that Mr. Drury were removed from the neighbourhood, and that he was a nuisance. These men, who had talked this matter, as they did every matter over at the Grey Goose public-house, without noticing a stranger amongst them, were astonished and confounded to be brought against their own respected master. At first they refused to speak, but they were assured that if they did not they would be sent to prison; and Mr. Woodburn, who had no wish to deny those imprudent words, told them he wished them to speak out all that they knew, and said that it was true that he had said such words, but of course, with no evil intent. The men, thus having their tongues loosed, gave evidence, but never having been in a witness-box before, and being badgered by the opposing lawyer and by the magistrates, made a confused mess of it. It was taken down, as admitted evidence on their part, that Mr. Woodburn had uttered words of the sort evincing a strong feeling against Mr. Drury. Evidence was brought from the hay-makers in the meadows to prove that Mr. Woodburn and Mr. Drury were in the meadows at the same time; that they both returned home by the ferry, Mr. Drury soon after Mr. Woodburn; that they had observed no other person about the ferry between the passing of Mr. Woodburn and Mr. Drury. It was also given in evidence by various persons summoned, amongst whom, to their inexpressible mortification, were Howell Crusoe and Job Latter, the blacksmith, that there was a sort of misunderstanding betwixt the two gentlemen. As for Crusoe and Latter, they added at the same time that they would sooner believe the moon would fall than that Mr. Woodburn would hurt a hair of any man alive.