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as upon Wensday at noone, old Sr Henry Palmer asking
me, I told hym truly I did not know.
26. Yet, that very day, towards night, Sr Edward
Dering and his associates came to the Judge wth certayn
bills of ye Assize, and, wthall, acquaynted hym and
the rest of ye Bench the wishes of divers were to petition
the Parlnt from these Assizes, as other parts had
done; that if we yt sate there were willing to joyn wth
them they should goe forward, otherwise leave it of.
To wch Mr. Justice Mallet made answer, this was that
did not at all concerne him as Judge of th' Assize, that
he would leave them to consider of it wth ye Justices of
the Peace, and so, having no partner, went immediately
to try causes in the other Court, the others easyly assenting
to ye motion, and he after was committed to ye
Tower for not opposing it.1
27. Amongst us, the question grewe, who should draw
this Petition. It was concluded (truly upon my motion)
the Grand Jury should nominate some of ye Bench,
and they some of ye Grand Jury, to consider and doe it.
Upon wch, such as were chosen of eyther side went
together in a private lodging, of well number I myselfe
was one, where were presented unto us divers heads,
of wch some were approved, some corrected, others expunged.
I remember that in the second period, "for
ye children of Papists to have beene brought up in the
reformed religion," to have beene added on Sr John Sedley's
motion (perhaps the hardest and least justifiable
1 "This Petition," says Clarendon,
" was communicated by many to their
friends, and copies thereof sent abroad before the Subscription
was ready,
whereupon the House of Peers took notice of it, as tending to some
commotion in Kent; and in the Debate, the Earl of Bristol taking
notice that he had seen a Copy of it, and had had some conference about
it with Judge Mallet,' who was then Judge of Assize in Kent, and
newly
return'd out of his Circuit, both the Earl and the Judge, for
having but seen
the Petition, were presently committed to the Tower, and a
Declaration
published, ' that none should presume to deliver that, or the like
Petition,
to either House.' " (Clarendon's ' Hist, of the Rebellion,'
book v. p. 382,
folio edit. 1704.)—ED.
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