At the Kent Quarter Sessions, held at Maidstone on Thursday,
three men were tried for "having riotously and tumultuously ob- structed" the parish-officers in levying a distress for church-rates at Seven Oaks. The case appears to have been made out against the prisoners; who had nothing to say in their defence, but that " they looked upon a law which enabled one man to take another's goods in support of a religion which he could not enjoy, was as bad as one which authorized robbery on the high road." The Juryimmediately acquitted the prisoners.
Two other men were then tried for obstructing the sale of the pig which was seized in the distress alluded to in the above trial. Here the evidence seems to have been defective; and the prisoners were acquitted. One of them is Secretary to the West Kent Political Union.
The defendants in these cases bitterly complained of the amount of fees exacted from them by the officers of the Court ; which, in one case, were 2/. 14s., and in each of the others 4/. Ss.; besides being com- pelled to go to Maidstone on so trumpery a charge. They refused to pay the fees; and were told that their recognizances would be forfeited.
Mr. John Williams, a gentleman of considerable landed property, and respectable connexions, was tried, along with one of his servants, at the late Hertford Quarter-Sessions, for committing a brutal assault on some poor women, who were gleaning .in his fields contrary to his .permission. He rode his horse against one old woman, and pushed her mtoa ditch; he struck angther a violent blow on the chest, and ordered one othis men to hold her while another struck her two blows on the .face. A question arose in the course of the trial, as to the right of the proprietor to prevent the poor from gleaning on his land: The Court-
ourt decided
decided that he had that right, though Mr. Williams was not justified in the means he took to enforce it. The Jury found Mr. Williams and his man both guilty ; and the Court fined 'theformer fifty pounds ; and the latter one pound. This trial excited very great interest in the neighbourhood.
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