e style he always made use of, and the great
affectation of intrepidity and resolution which he always put on would
have moved anybody (had it not been for his melancholy condition) to
smile at the vanity of the man.

At the time he was taken up, he had, it seems, a good suit of clothes
taken from him, which put him so much out of humour, because he could
not appear, as he said, like a gentleman at the sessions-house, that
when he was arraigned and should have put himself upon his trial, he
refused to plead unless they were delivered to him again. But to this
the Court answered that it was not in their power, and on his persisting
to remain mute, after all the exhortations which were made to him, the
Court at last ordered that the sentence of the press should be read to
him, as is customary on such occasions; after which the Judge from the
Bench spoke to him to this effect

Nathaniel Hawes,

The equity of the Law of England, more tender of the lives of its
subjects than any other in the world, allows no person to be put to
death, either unheard or without the positive proof against him of
the fact whereon he stands charged; and that proof, too, must be
such as shall satisfy twelve men who are his equals, and by whose
verdict he is to be tried. And surely no method can be devised
fuller than this is, as well of compassion, as of Justice. But then
it is required that the person to be tried shall aver his innocence
by pleading Not Guilty to his indictment, which contains the charge.
You have heard that which the grand jury have found against you. You
see here twelve honest men ready to enquire impartially into the
evidence that shall be given against you. The Court, such is the
humanity of our constitution, is counsel for you as you are a
prisoner. What hinders then, that you should submit to so fair, so
equal a trial; and wherefore will you, by a brutish obstinacy, draw
upon you that heavy judgement which the Law has appointed for those
who seem to have lost the rational faculties of men?

To this Hawes impudently made answer, that the Court was formerly a
place of Justice, but now it was become a place of injustice; that he
doubted not but that they would receive a severer sentence than that
which they had pronounced upon him; and that for his part, he made no
question of dying with the same resolution with which he had often
beheld death, and wo