Price.] 218 [M-Ej. 



the jury for being' led by Bushel, and said to them, "You shall not 

 be dismissed till you bring in a verdict which the court will accept. 

 You shall be locked up, without meat, drink, fire, and tobacco. We 

 will have a verdict by the help of God, or you shall starve for it." 

 The contest lasted from the 1st to the 5th of September, and ended 

 in the jury finding a verdict as to both prisoners of not guilty; in 

 the prisoners and jurors being amerced by the court forty marks a 

 man, and the commitment of the jurors to Newgate. After long and 

 learned discussion of the rights of jurors upon the Habeas Corpus, 

 Chief Justice Vaughan " delivered the opinion of the greatest part 

 of the judges," '' that the prisoners ought to be discharged," " be- 

 cause the jurors may know that of their own knowledge, which might 

 guide them to give their verdict contrary to the sense of the court." 

 (Freeman's Reps. 5.) 



It is true, that in ancient times, according to the ground of this 

 decision, jurors were taken from the vicinage, that they might act 

 upon their own knowledge, as well as upon the evidence they heard 

 in court ; but in this age, of an improved system, it is intended that 

 every cause shall be tried on the evidence heard in court in presence 

 of the parties, yet if jurors have knowledge of facts pertinent to the 

 issue in trial, it is their duty to state such knowledge, and testify as 

 witnesses as well as try the cause. The reason given in Bushel's 

 case, for the right of the jury to find against the views of the court 

 is never heard in the present age ; nor would any one deny in this 

 age, the power of the jury over the whole cause, after hearing the 

 charge of the court in criminal causes. 



This victory of Penu's jury was gained by a minority of one-third 

 the jurors; first over their eight fellow-members, next over their 

 judges and the Crown prosecution ; a victory worth more to human 

 liberty than many ordinary well-fought battles in which thousands 

 are slain. 



While yet the Stuarts reigned. Lord Hale, in his Pleas of the 

 Crown, stated the rule as to verdicts to be this : " If there be eleven 

 agreed, and but one dissenting, who says he will rather die in 

 prison, yet the verdict shall not be taken by eleven ; nor yet the re- 

 fuser fined or imprisoned, and therefore, where such a verdict was 

 taken by eleven, and the twelfth fined and imprisoned, it was upon 

 great advice ruled the verdict was void, and the twelfth man de- 

 livered, and a new venire awarded; for men are not to be forced to 

 give their verdict against their judgment." (2 Hale's P. C. 297.) 

 This decision " upon great advice," was made in the 41 Edward III, 



