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whole of the trial, has certainly entitled him to admiration and respect. I had undoubtedly prepared myself to conduct his cause in a manner totally different from that which I have pursued: it was my purpose to have selected those parts of the evidence only by which he was affected, and, by a minute attention to the particular entries, to have separated him from the rest. By such a co urse I could have steered his vessel safely out of the storm, and brought her, without damage, into a harbour of safety, while the other unfortunate prisoners were left to ride out this awful tempest. But he insisted on holding out a rope to save the innocent from danger; he would not suffer his defence to be put upon the footing which discretion would have suggested. On the contrary, though not implicated himself in the alleged conspiracy, he has charged me to waste and destroy my strength to prove that no such guilt can be brought home to others. I rejoice in having been made the humble instrument of so much good; my heart was never so much in a cause.

You may see that I am tearing myself to pieces by exertions beyond my powers-I have neither voice nor strength to proceed further. I do not, indeed, desire to conciliate your favour, nor to captivate your judgments by elocution in the close of my discourse; but I conclude this cause, as I concluded the former, by imploring that you may be enlightened by that Power which can alone unerringly direct the human mind in the pursuit of truth and justice.

CASE of the BISHOP OF BANGOR and others, indicted for a riot Tried at Shrewsbury Assizes on the 26th of

and an assault.

July 1796.

THE SUBJECT.

THEExemplary morals and decorum which have so long, to the honour of this country, distinguished the high dignitaries of her national church, bestowed upon the trial of the right reverend prelate, who was the principal object of it, an extraordinary degree of curiosity and interest. Indeed, from a perusal of the whole proceedings we cannot help thinking that the prosecutor might, perhaps, have been influenced by the expectation that any compromise would have been preferred by the defendant and his friends to even a public discussion of such an extraordinary accusation as that of a riot and assault by an English bishop, assisted by other clergymen of his diocese, within the very precincts of his own cathedral. The reverend prelate, however, was not to be intimidated. He pleaded Not Guilty to the indictment, and received the clear acquittal of a jury of his countrymen.

The indictment was preferred against the Lord Bishop of Bangor, the Rev. Dr Owen, the Rev. John Roberts, the Rev. John Williams, and Thomas Jones, gent.; and was prosecuted by Samuel Grindley, the deputyregistrar of the Bishop's Consistorial Court.

The indictment charged that Samuel Grindley, the prosecutor, was deputy-registrar of the Consistorial Court of the bishopric of Bangor, and that being such, he had of right the occupation of the registrar's office adjoining to the cathedral; that the bishop and the other defendants, intending to disturb the prosecutor in the execution of his office, and to trouble the peace of the King, unlawfully entered into the office, and stayed there for an hour, against the will of the prosecutor; and it further charged that they made a disturbance there against the King's peace, and assaulted Grindley, so being registrar, with intent to expel him from the office.

The indictment was originally preferred in the Court of Great Sessions, in Wales, where the offence was charged to have been committed, but for a more impartial hearing was removed into the Court of King's Bench, and sent down for trial in the next adjoining county, before a special jury at Shrewsbury, where Mr Adam and Mr Erskine attended on special retainers; the former as counsel for the prosecution, and the latter for the bishop and the other defendants.

In the pursuit of our plan, to preserve some remarkable speeches of Lord Erskine, when at the bar, we felt that we could not, upon this singular occasion, have recourse to a better or more impartial preface than to introduce, at length, the speech of Mr Adam, who conducted the prosecutor's case with the greatest zeal, ability, and eloquence; his address to the

jury, containing all the facts intended to be proved and relied on; and as the speech of Mr Erskine for the bishop comprehends also the whole body of the evidence, as it remained after the examination and cross-examination of the witnesses, and on which, therefore, he rested his client's claim to acquittal, having called no witnesses on the part of the defendants, the whole matter for judgment appears most distinctly, from the two speeches, without the introduction of the proofs; more especially, as we have also printed the summing-up of the evidence by the judge. *

Mr Ellis opened the pleadings-Mr Adam for the prosecution.

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR LORDSHIP, AND GENTLEMEN of the Jury, -You have heard from my learned friend who has opened the pleadings to you that Samuel Grindley is the prosecutor, and that he is deputy-registrar of the diocese of Bangor. You have heard, likewise, that the defendants are the Bishop of Bangor, three clergymen, and a gentleman who is agent for the bishop.

In the outset of this cause I have already learned enough from the manner in which my learned friends have received the opening of the pleadings to show me that they seem to have an inclination, as it were, to make that a jest which, I can assure you, is a matter of extreme seriousness. Gentlemen, I introduce it to you with all the anxiety which belongs to a person who is unaccustomed to address you-I introduce it with the anxiety which belongs to a person who is to maintain a conflict with abilities that are seldom unsuccessful; but I open it to you, I do assure you, in the pure spirit of moderation and of candour, and, if I might say so in a question of this sort, in the pure spirit of the true principles of Christianity that is, of wishing that all mankind should do unto others as they wish to see done unto themselves.

Gentlemen, I wish to call your attention to it seriously, and will just take the liberty of stating why you are called upon to judge in this cause. The question to be tried did not happen within your ordinary jurisdiction: it was not in this county that the offence which is complained of took place: but an application has been made to remove it here; and it is possible that such an application might produce some prejudice in your minds, as if there had been something in the conduct of the party for whom I have the honour to appear which has made it improper to permit the question to be tried where it arose. The application to remove the cause from Wales to the nearest English county was made upon an affidavit which I have not seen, and was granted by Lord Chief-Justice Kenyon, who undoubtedly exercised his discretion wisely and justly,

They who may wish to refer to the proofs themselves will find them in the printed report of the trial, as taken in shorthand by Mr Gurney, from which these speeches are taken, and which was published at the time, by Mr Stockdale of Piccadilly.

as he does upon all occasions. He thought that, under the circumstances stated by those concerned for the Bishop of Bangor, and upon the affidavit made by those who are prosecuted, without any opposition or interference of any sort or kind whatever by the person who appears here as the prosecutor, that it was fit to remove it. When he did so, I know he removed it to a tribunal of uprightness, of virtue, and honour. I know he removed it to a situation where, I am confident, intelligence and integrity will alike prevail; and I am by no means afraid of the mere circumstance of its being removed having any influence upon minds like yours.

Gentlemen, there may have arisen prejudices in this, as there do arise prejudices in many causes. Undoubtedly, this is not the first time that the matter has been the subject of conversation and discourse; probably it is not the first time that even you who are impannelled to try the cause may have heard of it. It is my duty to my client, it is my duty to the public likewise, if there should have been any such conversation about this prosecution, to remove all those prejudices, to remove all the impressions that may have been received, not only from your minds, were it possible you could have received them, but from all those that stand around. I say it is important to my client, and it is important to the cause of public justice, that I should endeavour to remove them.

Gentlemen, I beg leave to state to you, in the temperate spirit which I have professed, that this is not a question in which the general religious establishment of the country is at all involved: it is a question, I can assure you, which is confined to the individuals. who appear upon this record. It reaches no further than their conduct on the particular occasion. It is a question which cannot, I am sure, have the least effect to the prejudice of that doctrine, or to the prejudice of that rank and situation in the State which is so important to the well-being of society, and so essential to bind together and to sustain those principles which tend, not only to our happiness hereafter, but to the good government of the world in which we now live. I pledge myself, then, that when you come to hear this case, you will find that the facts I shall prove are confined singly and solely to the parties named in this indictment.

Gentlemen, there is another circumstance to which I could wish to call your attention before I enter into the merits of the case— namely, that although a church dignitary stands in the front of those indicted, that is no reason whatever why this indictment should not have been preferred; for if the facts which I have to state to you, and which I shall afterwards prove-if the principles of law which, under his Lordship's direction, I shall have the honour to lay down to you, are correct, you will find that the public justice must be satisfied by a verdict of guilty, notwithstanding the rank and situation of the first individual who is indicted.

It is a painful thing to me, not only on account of his rank and his situation, as a bishop of the Church and as a peer of Parlia

ment, to address you upon a subject of this sort; but it is more so when I consider that, in the intercourse of my professional life, I have had frequent occasion to see that person discharging duties in another place in a judicial and legislative capacity. I have often had the honour, and I will say too the satisfaction, to address him in that station. Gentlemen, I can assure you that I speak with no personal feelings against the bishop; they are all naturally on the other side. But what is more, I can assure you that my instructions are, to conduct the cause in a pure spirit of temper and moderation, such as I have already described to you.

Gentlemen, this is not the only time that dignitaries of the Church have been indicted, and found guilty. You have but to look back to the bead-roll of the State trials, and you will find many instances of the sort. You have but to reflect a few years back, when a person, upon an indictment, removed in the same manner, though not a bishop, yet a dignitary in the Church, was brought into this court, for reasons similar to those which bring you now here to try this indictment. They who heard my learned friend* upon that occasion, they who have read the history of that period, cannot forget the uninterrupted stream of splendid eloquence and of powerful ability, which has been rolling on, with increasing force, from that period to the present moment, and which, then almost in its infancy, was exerted in a question similar to that in which I have now the honour to address you, which marks that there was, within our own memory, in this very place, a prosecution of a church dignitary for a misdemeanour, as there is upon the present occasion.

Gentlemen, I will state plainly why this question is tried, and why you are called to deliver a verdict upon it. It is, in the first place, upon principles of public justice, in order that the justice of the country may be satisfied. The prosecution is likewise proceeded in on another principle, which I am sure I am warranted by the law of the land to state as a sound one; it is founded in an honest, fair, justifiable attempt, upon the part of this prosecutor, to vindicate his own character through the medium of this prosecution; I say, when I assert that to you, I state a legitimate ground of prosecution, and one that is consistent with the laws of the country for it is in the power of any individual to use the name of his Majesty for the purposes of public justice; aye, and for the purpose of vindicating his own character and reputation. It is done every day in the case of libel, and may equally be done in the case of assault or riot.

The situation of this prosecutor was, and is, that of a person who, by industry in his profession, and in the different situations which he held in the part of the country where this offence was committed, gained to himself a livelihood. He found himself at once in the eye of that public where he lives, in the circle of that community * Mr Erskine, as counsel for the Dean of St Asaph.

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