On the 28th of July another grand jury was sworn, and, like the old one, was composed of merchants.  The following persons composed it:  Joseph Robinson, James Livingston, Hermanus Rutgers, jun., Charles LeRoux, Abraham Boelen, Peter Rutgers, Jacobus Roosevelt, John Auboyneau, Stephen Van Courtlandt, jun., Abraham Lynsen, Gerardus Duyckinck, John Provost, Henry Lane, jun., Henry Cuyler, John Roosevelt, Abraham DePeyster, Edward Hicks, Joseph Ryall, Peter Schuyler, and Peter Jay.[252]

Sarah Hughson had been pardoned.  John Ury was brought into court, when he challenged some of the jury.  William Hammersley, Gerardus Beekman, John Shurmur, Sidney Breese, Daniel Shatford, Thomas Behenna, Peter Fresneau, Thomas Willett, John Breese, John Hastier, James Tucker, and Brandt Schuyler were sworn to try him.  Barring formalities, he was arraigned upon the old indictment; viz., felony, in inciting and exciting the Negro slave Quack to set fire to the governor’s house.  The king’s counsel were the attorney-general, Richard Bradley, and Messrs. Murray, Alexander, Smith, and Chambers.  Poor Ury had no counsel, no sympathizers.  The attorney-general, in an opening speech to the jury, said that certain evidence was to be produced showing that the prisoner at the bar was guilty as charged in the indictment; that he had a letter that he desired to read to them, which had been sent to Lieut.-Gov.  Clark, written by Gen. Oglethorpe ("the visionary Lycurgus of Georgia"), bearing date of the 16th of May.  The following is a choice passage from the letter referred to:—­

“Some intelligence I had of a villanous design of a very extraordinary nature, and if true very important, viz., that the Spaniards had employed emissaries to burn all the magazines and considerable towns in the English North America, and thereby to prevent the subsisting of the great expedition and fleet in the West Indies; and for this purpose many priests were employed, who pretended to be physicians, dancing-masters, and other such kinds of occupations, and under that pretence to get admittance and confidence in families."[253]

The burden of his effort was the wickedness of Popery and the Roman-Catholic Church.  The first witness called was the irrepressible Mary Burton.  She began by rehearsing the old story of setting fire to the houses:  but this time she varied it somewhat; it was not the fort that was to be burnt first, but Croker’s, near a coffee-house, by the long bridge.  She remembered the ring drawn with chalk, saw things in it that looked like rats (the good Horsemanden throws a flood of light upon this otherwise dark passage by telling his reader that it was the Negroes’ black toes!); that she peeped in once and saw a black thing like a child, and Ury with a book in his hand, and at this moment she let a silver spoon drop, and Ury chased her, and would have caught her, had she not fallen into a bucket of water, and thus marvellously escaped!  But the rule was to send this curious Mary to bed when any thing of an unusual nature was going on.  Ury asked her some questions.