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Roman Catholics than to afford relief to the nonconformists. It was a bungling piece of patchwork to amend a vicious system of sanguinary legislation; and the awkward attempts at a comprehension ended in smoke.

The

and the amalgamation of different parties.
one expected to unite all hearts by attacking all un-
derstandings; the other trusted more to the gradual
operation of Christian feeling, by which alone he be-
lieved that extended unity would finally be effected.
The issue has proved, that in this case Owen had
made the wiser calculation.'*

The Act against conventicles was again renewed in 1670, and enforced against the nonconformists with unmitigated rigour. Baxter alleged, that some

of the new clauses, added to the old Act, had a re-
ference to his own case. The most peaceful, loyal,

and respectable among them, were not spared. Their
meetings in London were infested with spies, and
disturbed with bands of armed men.
The partial
liberty which the silenced ministers took to resume
their labours among the remnant who had escaped
the ravages of the recent pestilence, and the devas-
tations of the fire, were now looked upon with an
evil eye by the court and the High Church party, and
they seemed resolved to put them down. Sheldon
was as zealous in this business as any Spanish inquis-
itor could have been, to proscribe and punish here-
tics against the holy mother church.' He ad-
dressed the bishops of his province, urging them to
promote, by every means in their power, 'so blessed
a work as the preventing and suppressing of conven
ticles,' which the King and the Parliament, out of
their pious care for the welfare of the church and
kingdom,' had endeavoured to accomplish.

It was about this period that the Earl of Lauderdale sent for Baxter, and wished to engage him to accompany him on an expedition to make some alterations, and settle the state of ecclesiastical affairs in Scotland. By the king's permission, he professed to consult Baxter, and to induce his compliance, was authorised to offer him a bishopric, or professorship

While Baxter resided at Acton, he became acquainted with Sir Matthew Hale, who was lord chief baron of the exchequer. He was a person of preeminent piety, a judge of incorruptible integrity, an honour and a pattern to the legal profession, in a corrupt age, when the streams of public justice were often poisoned at the fountain head. Though men very dissimilar in their natural temperament and habits of study, yet they were kindred spirits on all the cardinal verities of the common salvation. They had a mutual predilection for metaphysical discussion; but the congenial sympathies of their minds found their sweetest solace and fervent friendship in the fundamental principles of the glorious gospel of the blessed God. Their mutual Christian friendship was maintained inviolate for life, and, we doubt not, was a blessing to both. Baxter says: The conferences which I had frequently with him, mostly about the immortality of the soul, and other philosophical and foundation points, were so edifying, that his very questions and objections did help me to more light than other men's solutions. ... When the people crowded in and out of my house to hear, he openly showed me great respect, before them, at the door, and never spoke a word against it, as was no small encouragement for the people to go in; though the other sort muttered, that a judge should so far countenance that which they took to be against the law! After Baxter was released from prison, he seems to have resided for more than a year at Tatteredge, near Barnet. Here he was separated from part of his family. By the smallness of the apartments, smoke, and cold, the place was exceedingly uncom-in one of our Scottish colleges. But Baxter, though fortable; and if it was not the means of inducing some of his bodily complaints, certainly tended very much to aggravate them. Such, however, were the ardour and energy of his mind, his untiring and invincible perseverance at the pen and the page, when recluded from the labours of the pulpit, that during the five following years, from 1665 till 1670, he produced some of the most elaborate and valuable of his practical works Within the same period, also, he had frequent and long discussions with Dr Owen, upon terms of agreement among Christiaus of all parties. On all the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, these two great men were essentially one. The character of their minds was widely different. On the constitution, union, and government of a gospel church, there was a considerable disparity in their respective sentiments. Perhaps the Doctor had studied these subjects more minutely than Baxter. He seems to have been more clear and correct, but much less ardent and sanguine than Baxter, as to the practicability of a cordial union among the different parties that the. divided the professing world. Baxter looked more to rules, and details, and mutual concessions. Owen seems to have distrusted and suspected the efficacy of these, and looked more to identity of principle, and unity of spirit, and affection, as the most essential elements of church union,

He

he thought more favourably of this old Covenanter,
and professed Presbyterian, than he really deserved,
in a sensible, impressive, manly letter, respectfully,
but decidedly, declined the proffered honour.
who had previously refused a bishopric in England,
was not likely to be tempted to accept of one in Scot-
land, where the circumstances of temptation to enter
into the arbitrary measures of the court, and to sac-
rifice principle at the shrine of courtly honour and
ecclesiastical interest, were equally objectionable as
in his native soil. Baxter was not a person of such
flexible principles, nor of such an accommodating
conscience, as to concur with his lordship in sanc-
tioning these sanguinary enactments, and in carrying
into effect those desperate measures of dragooning
the Scottish Presbyterians into all the paraphernalia
of Episcopal polity. Both Charles and his lordship
had mistaken their man. It would have been an
unnatural and uncomfortable yoke to each of the
parties. The aged veteran, therefore, wisely declined
the honours and emoluments of ecclesiastical pre-
ferment in Scotland, as he had already disposed of a
similar offer in England. Such facts speak volumes
of the high value which Baxter, and other of his,
contemporaries of kindred principles, set upon the

* Sec Orme's Life, vol. i. p. 284.

birth-right of civil freedom and religious liberty. In showed the same leniency to him that the weak and the letter addressed to his lordship he says: indecisive Jewish prince showed to the Lord's prophet.

'I would request that I might be allowed to live quietly to follow my private studies, and might once again have the use of my books, which I have not seen these ten years. I pay for a room for their standing in at Kidderminster, where they are eaten by worms and rats, having no sufficient security for my quiet abode in any place to encourage me to send for them. I would also ask that I might have the liberty, which every beggar has, to travel from town to town, I mean but to London, to oversee the press when any thing of mine is licensed for it. If I be sent to Newgate for preaching Christ's gospel (for I dare not sacrilegiously renounce my calling, to which I am consecrated per sacramentum ordinis), I would request the favour of a better prison, where I may but walk and write. These I would take as very great favours, and acknowledge your lordship as my benefactor if you procure them; for I will not so much injure you as to desire, or my reason as to expect, any greater matters, no, not the benefit of the law.' It is rare indeed that a bishopric is offered to a man in such circumstances, and much rarer to find a man possessed of so much principle as to refuse it, and to prefer the unrestrained liberty of a beggar, to travel from town to town,' as his own or his Master's business require him-the solitude of a cell to pursue his studies in peace, and the privilege of a prison yard for relaxation—to the splendid equipage and luxuries of a bishop's palace. Let none imagine that this arose from a weak enthusiastic mind, or that it was the obstinate whim of an ascetic, whose soul had been seared with misanthropy against his species, and who was incapable of relishing the sweets of social liberty, and the comforts of civilized life. Such a choice, and such a request, are indeed puzzling and perplexing to a time-serving and worldly-minded professor; but the subject is perfectly intelligible to a Christian who wishes to live in all good conscience toward God,' and to have this as his joy and rejoicing, even the testimony of his conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not by fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, he should have his conversation in the world.' He found himself in company with some of the Lord's holy prophets, many of whom the world was not worthy.' Moreover, Jeremiah said unto king Zedekiah, What have I offended against thee, or against thy servants, or against this people, that ye have put me in prison? Where are now your prophets who prophesied unto you, saying, The king of Babylon shall not come against you, nor against this land? Therefore hear now, I pray thee, O my lord the king, let my supplication, I pray thee, be accepted before thee, that thou cause me not to return to the house of Jonathan the scribe, lest I die there. Then Zedekiah the king commanded that they should commit Jeremiah to the court of the prison, and that they should give him daily a piece of bread out of the baker's street, until all the bread in the city was spent. Thus Jeremiah remained in the court of the prison.' In Baxter's future imprisonments it is questionable if lord Lauderdale ever did any thing to soften the rigours of his bondage; or if Charles

6

In 1671, Baxter lost the greater part of his fortune by the shutting up of the king's exchequer, amounting to upwards of a thousand pounds. He had intended it for a benevolent purpose, and not to soothe and support himself in his declining years. He says: All the money and estate that I had in the world, of my own, was there, except £10 per annum which I enjoyed for 11 or 12 years. Indeed it was not my own, which I mention to counsel those that would do good, to do it speedily, and "with all their might." I had got, in all my life, the sum of £1000. Having no child, I devoted almost all of it to a charitable use-a free school. I used my best and ablest friends, for seven years, with all the skill and industry I could, to help me to purchase a house, or land to lay it out on, that it might be accordingly settled.' This was an infamous transaction. It produced distress and ruin among many. Baxter never recovered a shilling of it. His chief regret, however, was, that it deprived him of carrying his benevolent intentions into effect; and he records the fact for the instruction and direction of posterity, that they should become their own executors, lay out their substance, for the glory of God and the good of man, with their own hands, and enjoy the gratification of seeing its happy effects in their lifetime. There is often much misappropriation and embezzlement in posthumous charities.

An event of considerable importance occurred in the spring of 1672. The king issued a declaration, dispensing with the penal statutes in operation against the nonconformists. This document declares, 'That his Majesty, by virtue of his supreme power in matters ecclesiastical, suspends all penal laws thereabout; and that he will grant a convenient number of public meeting-places to men of all sorts who conform not, provided the persons are approved by him, and that they only meet in places sanctioned by him, with open doors, and do not preach seditiously, nor against the Church of England. The Earl of Shaftesbury got the credit of advising this measure; but neither he nor his master deserved the credit which they claimed for having issued it, from any relentings for the injuries previously inflicted upon the nonconformists. Their design was to afford relief to the Roman Catholics. It was rather a kind of clap-trap for the silenced ministers, and several of them refused to avail themselves of the privilege which this morally just, but politically illegal, measure afforded them. Had the laws been founded in substantial justice, the king had no legal right to dispense with the execution of them. This dispensing power,' and suspicious act of grace, were not from sympathy with the principal sufferers; but to favour a party whose principles were more in unison with the secret sympathies of the king's heart. When a public plunderer scours the country, and pillages the population of their all, he may affect great generosity in giving back a tithe to a few of his favourites, when justice would have demanded restitution of the whole, and doomed the plunderer to the gallows. Nor need there be any demur among the plundered people as

to the lawfulness of taking back the tithe as an in-harassing circumstances, his ardent soul glowed with stalment, while they insist upon the restitution of seraphic ardour for opportunities to preach to the the whole as their lawful and unalienable property. people the unsearchable riches of Christ.' By the Some good men of all parties were disposed to avail precipitancy and crooked policy of his persecutors, themselves of the indulgence occasioned by the king's several of their attempts to ensnare, imprison, and dispensing power to promote the interests of reli- pillage him, failed. This, instead of mollifying, only gion. exasperated them. In 1682, he suffered more severely than ever for his nonconformity. One day he was suddenly surprised in his house by a band of constables and officers, who apprehended him by a warrant to seize his person for coming within five miles of a corporate town, producing, at the same time, no less than five more warrants to distrain for £195, for five sermons which he had preached. He had just risen from bed, in great weakness from a severe paroxysm of pain, and was following the offi

After recovery from a dangerous fit of sickness, Baxter had resolved to seek a license from the king to preach the gospel on the indulgence principle; but wished it simply as a nonconformist, and not under the title either of an Independent or Presbyterian. It appears that Sir Thomas Player, chamberlain of London, had procured one for him without any knowledge or effort of his own. And he says: The 19th of November was the first day, after ten years' silence, that I preached in a tolerated pub-cers to jail, when met by Dr Thomas Cox, a medilic assembly, though not yet tolerated in any consecrated church, but only against law in my own house.' About the same time he was chosen one of six ministers as a lecturer at Pinner's Hall; but his service there was not of long continuance.

cal gentleman, who ordered him back to his bed, while he went immediately to five of the justices, and deponed upon oath that Mr Baxter could not be lodged in jail but at the peril of his life. Upon this

a delay was obtained till they should consult with the king, who graciously permitted the postponement of his incarceration, that he might be suffered to die at home. Meanwhile they executed their warrants on the books and effects in his house, the former of which were not his own, and they sold even the bed upon which this venerable minister of the Lord Jesus lay sick. The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.' Baxter, however, had many pious firm friends, who could not be uninterested spectators of such a stene. They promptly advanced the money at which the articles seized in his house were appraised, in consequence of which they were retained. He afterwards reimbursed them. This iniquitous process, under covert of law, was originated and carried on without any previous notice or summons being sent him, or without his being acquainted who his accusers had been, and who were to be his judges. What a mockery of law, and insult upon the first principles of common justice! Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with the moral Governor of the universe, which frameth mischief by a law? They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood.' But Baxter could add, in the language of scripture, The Lord is my defence, and my God is the rock of my refuge.'

As the times seemed, for a short season, to become more favourable, Baxter was induced to erect or procure a place for meeting in Oxendon street. He had scarcely opened it, when an attempt was made to surprise and apprehend him, and commit him to the county jail on the Oxford Act; and though he, through an accidental absence, escaped, yet the person who officiated for him was apprehended, and committed to the Gatehouse for three months. Having been kept out of his new meeting house for a whole year, he took another in Swallow street. There also he was prevented from preaching to the people, as a guard had been set for several sabbaths together to prevent him from occupying it. Little do many dissenting churches and congregations, on these and similar sites, now think, while peacefully worshipping God 'under their vine and fig tree,' on those memorable spots, what hardships and incessant annoyances those fathers and founders of the nonconformist interest endured in wresting the privileges which they now enjoy from the iron grasp of civil tyranny and religious intolerance. The indulgence' and 'the king's license,' arising out of his 'dispensing power,' which promised much, yielded little substantial benefit to the ejected ministers. But a man like Baxter, of an ardent mind, and whose heart is in his Master's work, if he fail in one plan of operations, The king, now drawing near the end of his life his inventive resources will lead to the adoption of and reign, was sunk in the sensuality of his court, another, in which he will succeed. In the month of and callous to the sufferings of thousands of the best January, 1672-3, he commenced a week-day lecture of his subjects. The fires of intolerance burned with at Mr Turner's church in New Street, near Fetter redoubled fury. Prosecutions were multiplied to an Lane, where he preached the gospel freely, as he says, unexampled extent. Under the guise of an unrigh* with great convenience and God's encouraging bless-teous and execrable law, like the statutes of Draco, ing. On the Lord's day, however, he had no stated congregation to preach to, but occasionally gave his services to those who required them.

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tinged with blood, one class of subjects were sanctioned to live on pillage, and prey upon another. The one was pampered to live as beasts of prey; and Like the great apostle of the Gentiles, Baxter felt the other was doomed to suffer all manner of indigthat 'necessity was laid upon him to preach the gos-nities as beasts of burden. Many of the cormorants pel.' Even in his advanced years, and frequently of the canon and civil law were insatiable. labouring under a load of bodily infirmities, his bowels yearned for the spiritual necessities of his countrymen. While the snows of advanced age shaded his temples, in the midst of a thousand vexatious and

Their

scent in hunting out alleged heresy was keen as that of a Roman inquisitor; and with all the sang froid of Turks, they could relentlessly ride rough shod over many valuable men, of whom the world was

not worthy. Let us listen for a moment to the aged veteran himself. He says: 'But when they had taken and sold all, and I had borrowed some bedding and necessaries of the buyer, I was never the quieter, for they threatened to come upon me again, and take all, as mine, whosesoever it was, which they found in my possession, so that I had no remedy but utterly to forsake my house, and goods, and all, and take lodgings at a distance in a stranger's house; but having a long lease of my own house, which binds me to pay a greater rent than now it is worth, wherever I go I must pay that rent.' He 'took joyfully the spoiling of his goods, knowing in himself that he had in heaven a better and enduring substance.' He had been long separated from the greater part of his books. The few that he had borrowed from friends for consultation and reference, while composing some of his most valuable treatises, were seized and sold, regardless of either remonstrance or redress. This threw him entirely upon his bible, and the inexhaustible resources of heaven. Neither his faith nor his philosophy failed him under these privations. He consoled himself that he was near the end of that life and labour where no books

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Although the House of Commons had passed certain resolutions in order to mitigate some of the more rigorous statutes against the nonconformists; and although 'the king's dispensing power' held out a promise of some amelioration, yet neither the one nor the other afforded the aggrieved any essential relief. By spies, officers, and interested informers, and not a few judges, they were continually harassed in various parts of the country. Orders were issued from the king and the council board to suppress all conventicles, and in the hands of these administrators, they were not allowed to lie as a dead letter. They had quietly to bear the brunt of Jedburgh justice,' Irish evidence,' and 'Lynch law;' and although Baxter was a man formed of 'sterner stuff' than to flinch from the cross in any case in which the dictates of his conscience, and the principles of Divine revelation, were implicated, yet he was by no means the most forward to offend in infringing upon those intolerant statutes, which had ejected and silenced more than two thousand of the most conscientious and able ministers in England, and so se riously circumscribed the liberties of her best subjects. He was loyal to the constitution of his country, and was by no means a red-hot radical reformer. On matters of church polity, though not a latitudinarian, he was moderate almost to a fault. He was in a sickly emaciated state, deeply afflicted with stone, and now well stricken in years, yet he was a marked man. None of these things could screen him from the jealousy of High Church feeling, and the vengeance of the court. In 1683-4, the Rev. Thomas Mayot, a beneficed clergyman of the Church of England, died, and left a bequest of £600 in favour of sixty-four ejected ministers, and appointed Baxter as

the sole executor, ‘not because they were nonconformists, but on account of their piety and poverty.' This fact plainly shows, that that generous and compassionate conformist considered Baxter as 'a faithful steward' to administer his bounty to these worthy but deeply injured men. Indeed, he had a large share of the confidence of pious men of all parties. The bequest, however, was for a time intercepted. The king's attorney sued for it in chancery, and the lord keeper North gave it all to the king. Shortly after the Revolution, the commissioners of the Great Seal restored it to Baxter, to be appropriated to the proper persons, agreeably to the Will of the testator. The sleepless eye of Divine Providence frequently marks the dark deeds of human rapacity with determined disapprobation, and restores to the injured poor the portion designed for them.

During a great part of 1683, Baxter made little appearance in public; but he was unremitting in his application in private. His active mind was incessantly engaged with some of his numerous and various treatises, either upon practical or controversial theology. His pregnant mind was constantly teeming with something of a beneficial character for his species-either some pamphlet to answer an opponent on the spur of the moment, or some more elaborate production for the instruction and profit of future generations. His facility at composition was extraordinary. In that, he scarcely has had a superior, and in few ages an equal. Even to a green old age, in the midst of nameless bodily infirmities, it seems to have been wrought into a habit. Activity seemed necessary to his very being. He has thrown a vast amount of soul into his works. They bear the impress of a powerful energetic mind.

From repeated molestations by the public powers, Baxter's health was greatly broken down in 1684. While he lay in a state of languishing and pain, the justices of the sessions sent warrants to apprehend him. At that time there were about a thousand more whose names were upon the catalogue, all to be bound over to their good behaviour. He expected at least six months' imprisonment for not taking the Oxford oath, and for venturing to reside in London. He refused to open his chamber door to the officers. Their warrant did not authorise them to break it open. But the six officers were bent upon their object. They stationed themselves at his study door all night, and kept him from bed and food, and closely maintained the siege till he surrendered. They conveyed him, while scarcely able to stand upon his own feet, to the sessions, and bound him over to good behaviour under a bond of four hundred pounds. He simply wished to know his crime and accusers; but they gave him evasive answers, that it was for no substantive fault, but for the security of the government in evil times, and that they had a list of suspected persons who were to be treated in a similar manner. He told them that he would rather that they would at once send him to jail, than leave him at large involuntarily to implicate others, for if but five persons came in when he was praying, it would be construed into a breach of good behaviour, and subject them all to fine and imprisonHis judges replied: "That if they came un

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expectedly, and on other business, and not to a set if Charles had chastised them with whips,' for keepmeeting, nor yet if we did nothing contrary to lawing conventicles, James, his successor, 'would scourge and the practice of the church.' He rejoined, Our them with scorpions.' They had too good reason to innocency is not now any security to us. If but complain with the church of old, 'Therefore is judgtwo beggar women did but stand in the street, and ment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us; swear that I spake contrary to the law, though they we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightheard me not, my bonds and my liberty were at their ness, but we walk in darkness. . . . We roar all like will.' Nor was this a mere imaginary case-he ac- bears, and mourn sore like doves; we look for judgcordingly adds: For I myself, lying in my bed, ment, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far heard Mr J. R. preach in a chapel on the other side from us.... Judgment is turned away backward, of my chamber, and yet one Sibil Dash, and Eliza- and justice standeth far off; truth is fallen in the beth Coppel, two miserable poor women, who made street, and equity cannot enter; yea, truth faileth, a trade of it, swore to the justices that it was ano- and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a ther that preached; and they had thus sworn against prey; and the Lord saw it, and it displeased him that very many worthy persons in Hackney and else- there was no judgment.' where, on which their goods were seized for great mulcts or fines. To all this I had no answer, but that I must give bond, when they knew that I was not likely to break the behaviour, unless by lying in bed in pain.

Sometime before the demise of Charles, he had raised the famous, or rather infamous, Jefferies to the dignity of the bench. As might be expected, Baxter soon fell into his hands. There was an understanding between Charles and James, prior to the death of the former, and which the latter did not conceal when Duke of York, that Baxter was marked out for jail. When bound over, under a high penalty, to his good behaviour, the intention was to keep hold of him till matter of accusation was found against him. Judge Jefferies was a fit person to go any length with such a detestable deed. If any person in England could out-Herod Herod, this was the man. Profane in his principles, coarse in his char

Towards the latter years of Baxter's eventful life, both the political and ecclesiastical horizon were invested with a dark and dense gloom. The king's court was little better than a common brothel. The monarch himself, though he wore a diadem, was a cold blooded tyrant to the liberties of his country, and the happiness of his subjects, the sworn foe of serious piety and moral restraint, a Papist in heart, under a Protestant mask, a profane wit, and a licentious rake. He had brought the religion and liber-acter, a bully in his manners, sanguinary in his disties of the country to the verge of ruin. In February 1684-5, Charles II. closed his arbitrary and inglorious reign, and was called to appear at the tribunal of the Almighty, who 'cuts off the spirit of princes, and is terrible to the kings of the earth;' who brings the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity. Those who wear the crown, and the coronet, and the mitre, and those who occupy the judgment-seat, who are clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day,' would do well to remember, that when their immortal spirits pass the boundaries of time to take their just award from the Judge of the quick and the dead, impartial posterity will stamp their verdict of their principles and deeds upon monuments durable as marble. The seed of evil-doers shall never be renowned.' 'Is this man Coniah a despised broken idol? Is he a vessel wherein is no pleasure? Wherefore are they cast out, he and his seed, and are cast into a land that they know not? Even these despotic and dark deeds which distress the human family, and rend the frame-work of society, present a multitude of monitory lessons to posterity. O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord! Thus saith the Lord, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days, for no man of his seed shall prosper sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah.'

Happily for Great Britain, at that period of trouble and darkness, of dimness and anguish, which covered the land when James II. ascended the throne, with avowedly Popish principles, and high notions of prince ly prerogatives, there was a pious praying remnant in They had much reason to fear, that

the country.

* Orme's Life of Baxter, vol. i. pp. 331-2.

positions, capable of packing and brow-beating a jury, insulting the prisoner's counsel, and delivering decisions that would have disgraced a Spanish inquisitor, he did not scruple to disgrace the ermine, outrage the first principles of common justice, and expose the law to the contempt of every intelligent and well constituted mind. Of all Baxter's previous prosecutions, this conclusion of the drama certainly exceeded, as a dishonour to the British bench, an abandonment of all gravity, decency, and decorum, and a mere mockery of all law and justice. The pretext for the prosecution was, a supposed reference, in Baxter's Commentary on the New Testament, to the bishops of the Church of England; which was stigmatised as a scandalous and seditious book against the government, the bishops, and the church. The author was accordingly apprehended, and committed to the King's-Bench prison, by a warrant from Lord Chief Justice Jefferies, in the depth of winter, 1685. He applied for a Habeas Corpus, obtained it, and subsequently retired to the country till the approaching session in May following. At his advanced stage of life, and by the incessant pain to which he was subject, it was conceived that he could not bear the confinement of a prison. He, however, appeared at the appointed time in Westminster Hall, to wait his trial. On the 14th of May he pleaded not guilty.

Being much indisposed on the 18th, it was moved that he might have further time given him before his trial came on. This reasonable request, by his counsel, was rudely and peremptorily denied by Jefferies.

It does not appear that Baxter wrote any detailed account of this singular trial himself. No regular report appears to have been made of it in the State

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