At six o’clock in the evening the jury retired to consider their verdict.  The scene that followed in the jury room is described in the sworn affidavits of some of its participators.  The jury were supplied with supper by the crown officials; a liberal supply of intoxicating beverages, wines, brandy, &c., being included in the refreshments.  In their sober state several of the jury-men—­amongst them Alexander Thompson, of Cushendall, the foreman—­had refused to agree to a verdict of guilty.  It was otherwise, however, when the decanters had been emptied, and when threats of violence were added to the bewildering effects of the potations in which they indulged.  Thompson was threatened by his more unscrupulous companions with being wrecked, beaten, and “not left with sixpence in the world,” and similar means were used against the few who refused with him to return a verdict of guilty.  At six in the morning, the jury, not a man of whom by this time was sober, returned into court with a verdict of guilty, recommending the prisoner at the same time in the strongest manner to mercy.  Next day Orr was placed at the bar, and sentenced to death by Lord Yelverton, who, it is recorded, at the conclusion of his address burst into tears.  A motion was made, by Curran in arrest of judgment, chiefly on the grounds of the drunkenness of the jury but the judges refused to entertain the objection.  The following is the speech delivered by William Orr after the verdict of the jury had been announced:—­

“My friends and fellow-countrymen—­In the thirty-first year of my life I have been sentenced to die upon the gallows, and this sentence has been in pursuance of a verdict of twelve men, who should have been indifferently and impartially chosen.  How far they have been so, I leave to that country from which they have been chosen to determine; and how far they have discharged their duty, I leave to their God and to themselves.  They have, in pronouncing their verdict, thought proper to recommend me as an object of humane mercy.  In return, I pray to God, if they have erred, to have mercy upon them.  The judge who condemned me humanely shed tears in uttering my sentence.  But whether he did wisely in so highly commending the wretched informer, who swore away my life, I leave to his own cool reflection, solemnly assuring him and all the world, with my dying breath, that that informer was foresworn.

“The law under which I suffer is surely a severe one—­may the makers and promoters of it be justified in the integrity of their motives, and the purity of their own lives!  By that law I am stamped a felon, but my heart disdains the imputation.

“My comfortable lot, and industrious course of life, best refute the charge of being an adventurer for plunder; but if to have loved my country—­to have known its wrongs—­to have felt the injuries of the persecuted Catholics, and to have united with them and all other religious