He was brewer to the palace; and it was apprehended that the government counted on his voice.
The story goes that he complained bitterly of the position in which he found himself.

"Whatever I do," he said, "I am sure to be half ruined.
If I say Not Guilty, I shall brew no more for the King; and if I say Guilty, I shall brew no more for anybody else." [398] The trial then commenced, a trial which, even when coolly perused after the lapse of more than a century and a half, has all the interest of a drama.

The advocates contended on both sides with far more than professional keenness and vehemence: the audience listened with as much anxiety as if the fate of every one of them was to be decided by the verdict; and the turns of fortune were so sudden and amazing that the multitude repeatedly passed in a single minute from anxiety to exultation and back again from exultation to still deeper anxiety.
The information charged the Bishops with having written or published, in the county of Middlesex, a false, malicious, and seditious libel.
The Attorney and Solicitor first tried to prove the writing.

For this purpose several persons were called to speak to the hands of the Bishops.

But the witnesses were so unwilling that hardly a single plain answer could be extracted from any of them.