This (may it please your lordships and worships) may seem a strange way of discoursing in an illiterate shopkeeper.  I have endeavoured (although without the help of books) to improve that small portion of reason which God hath pleased to give me, and when reason plainly appears before me, I cannot turn away my head from it.  Thus for instance, if any lawyer should tell me that such a point were law, from which many gross palpable absurdities must follow, I would not, I could not believe him.  If Sir Edward Coke should positively assert (which he nowhere does, but the direct contrary) that a limited prince, could by his prerogative oblige his subjects to take half an ounce of lead, stamped with his image, for twenty shillings in gold, I should swear he was deceived or a deceiver, because a power like that, would leave the whole lives and fortunes of the people entirely at the mercy of the monarch:  Yet this, in effect, is what Wood hath advanced in some of his papers, and what suspicious people may possibly apprehend from some passages in that which is called the “Report.”

That paper mentions “such persons to have been examined, who were desirous and willing to be heard upon that subject.”  I am told, they were four in all, Coleby, Brown, Mr. Finley the banker, and one more whose name I know not.  The first of these was tried for robbing the Treasury in Ireland, and although he was acquitted for want of legal proof, yet every person in the Court believed him to be guilty.  The second was tried for a rape, and stands recorded in the votes of the House of Commons, for endeavouring by perjury and subornation, to take away the life of John Bingham, Esq.[3]

[Footnote 3:  Referring to these persons who were examined by the Committee, Monck Mason quotes from two letters from Archbishop King to Edward Southwell, Esq.  King was one of the council, and Southwell secretary of state at the time.  The first of these letters remarks:  “Could a greater contempt be put upon a nation, than to see such a little fellow as Wood favoured and supported against them, and such profligates as Brown and Coleby believed before a whole parliament, government, and private council.”  From the second letter, written on August 15th, 1724, Monck Mason gives the following extracts: 

“—­When I returned to Dublin I met with resolutions concerning our halfpence, founded chiefly on the testimony of two infamous persons, John Brown and Coleby:  as to the first of these, you will find his character in the votes of the house of commons, last parliament.  Tuesday, the 5th of November.

“’Resolved, that it appears to this Committee, that a wicked conspiracy was maliciously contrived and carried on against John Bingham, to take away his life and fortune.

“’Resolved, that it is the opinion of this Committee, that the said John Brown, of Rabens, Esq. and his accomplices, were the chief promoters and advisers of the said conspiracy.