Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/756

 746 R. G. Usher long series of overt and unqualified attacks upon the plans of the government b}- a man who had many times demonstrated his animus and his ability to accomplish whatever he undertook under its spur. Thomas Ladd, Fuller's new client," was a merchant of Yar- mouth, and had been tried in the ecclesiastical court at Norwich for attending a conventicle at the house of one Jackler, a nonconformist minister, who had been deprived for his refusal to observe the canons of the church. The record of his institution at Norwich shows that he had conformed in 1603, and that he possessed no degree of any sort from any university. He was therefore neither a consistent nor a learned man. Ladd declared in his defence that he and his friends had held no conventicle, inasmuch as they only met privateh' to go over the sermon preached on Sunday morning by the minister of the Established Church; but there can be little doubt that those present added statements of their own and that the meeting was in strict law a conventicle. This however was not the issue in the case. Ladd had made some difficulty about taking the oath ex ofRcio, and after he had testified and a considerable discrepancy between the various answers became apparent, he was summoned to Lambeth upon a charge of perjury. There he refused to take the oath ex oihc'io at all unless he was first allowed to peruse the answers he had made at Norwich. The procedure of the High Commission made it impossible to grant this request and he was therefore com- mitted to prison, March 29, 1607. Fuller's other client, Mansel, a nonconformist minister, had been arrested as one of the movers of a petition to the House of Commons, which the government thought oftensive, and having also refused to take the oath ex officio unless he was allowed to see the charge against him, was likewise im- prisoned. At this juncture. Fuller was retained as counsel for the two prisoners and at once took charge of the case. He soon procured 'The authorities for this most interesting episode are (i) Lansdowne MSS., 1 1 72, f. 97, which is the only trustworthy source for the dates and actual facts. It purports to be a full report of the case and contains a long Latin account of the events leading up to Fuller's commitment by the High Commission, then quotes the writ of committal in full in English, then gives in Latin the con- sultation issued by the King's Bench, and closes with some further notes of the case in Latin. It was probably prepared either for use at the hearing before the King's Bench in September, 1607 on the consultation on the prohibition, or was employed by Hobart in the hearings on the habeas corpus in November, 1607. It is just possible that it was prepared by a newswriter and circulated for information. In any case it is far more trustworthy than (2) the tract entitled The Argument of Nicholas FttHer, which is only an ex-parte statement by Fuller's own friends, which we know omits much that he admitted he said, and which adds more which it is reasonably certain he did not say.