jury found a true bill against him for publishing a blasphemous libel. The trial came on in the queen's bench on 14 June. Publication was not proved, and there was nothing in a tract ‘fairly and temperately written’ (Reid) to support the charge of blasphemy. But the two primates and four or five other bishops had seats on the bench; Emlyn's counsel were browbeaten, and he was not permitted to speak for himself. Pyne in charging the jury told them ‘if they acquitted him my lords the bishops were there;’ the deliberations of the jury were cut short, and they brought in a verdict of guilty. Emlyn was committed to gaol, and ordered to be brought up on the 16th for sentence. In the interim the foreman of the jury (Sir Humphrey Jervis) visited him to express sympathy, as did Wetenhall, bishop of Kilmore. Rochford was for placing him in the pillory, but Boyse, who had proved his own orthodoxy in an answer to Emlyn's ‘Inquiry,’ made strenuous efforts to obtain a milder sentence, and got Emlyn to address a supplicatory letter to the chief justice. On the 16th, when Emlyn appeared, the solicitor-general (Brodrick) moved that he should be allowed to retract, but this he would not do. He was sentenced to a year's imprisonment, to be extended until he had paid a fine of 1,000l. and found security for good behaviour during life. Hoadly thus sums up the case: ‘The nonconformists accused him, the conformists condemned him, the secular power was called in, and the cause ended in an imprisonment and a very great fine, two methods of conviction of which the gospel is silent.’
Emlyn was at first allowed to remain a prisoner in the sub-sheriff's house at his own cost. On 6 Oct. the chief justice ordered his removal to the common gaol, where he lay five weeks, in a close room with five others, till his health failed. On petition he was transferred to the Marshalsea by habeas corpus. Here he ‘hired a pretty large room’ to himself, and preached on Sundays to the debtors and a few of ‘the lower sort’ of his Wood Street flock. He employed himself in writing a couple of treatises, and publishing the funeral sermon which he had preached on the death of his wife. None of his dissenting brethren came near him except Boyse, who made repeated attempts to obtain a reduction of his fine. On the other hand, there was a clerical petition for a grant of it, to rebuild a parish church, and a petition from Trinity College to apply it in additions and repairs. At length one of his friends, Thomas Medlicote, got the ear of Ormonde, the lord-lieutenant, and the fine was reduced to 70l. Yet the primate of Armagh (Narcissus Marsh) demanded, as queen's almoner, a shilling in the pound of the original fine, and was not easily satisfied with 20l., which was paid in addition to the 70l. Emlyn was released on Saturday, 21 July 1705. Next day he preached a farewell sermon (printed Works, iii. 115 sq.) to the debtors discharged with him by an act of grace. Immediately before his release the Ulster general synod (June 1705) for the first time made subscription to the Westminster Confession imperative upon all entrants to the ministry. On the other hand, the spirit of theological inquiry led to the formation of a ministers' club, known as the ‘Belfast Society’ (1705), which ultimately became the parent of the non-subscribing body. Emlyn usually visited Ireland at intervals of two or three years, and found ‘the odium of his opinions beginning to wear off apace.’
He fixed his permanent abode in London. A small congregation of his sympathisers collected at Cutlers' Hall, formerly occupied by Thomas Beverley, ‘the prophet.’ Leslie, the nonjuror, protested vehemently against the toleration of this new sect. Complaint was made to Archbishop Tenison by Francis Higgins, a Dublin clergyman, but Tenison would not interfere. In June 1711 the lower house of convocation represented to the queen that weekly sermons were preached in defence of unitarian principles. After a few years the congregation died out, and Emlyn found all pulpits closed against him except at the general baptist church in the Barbican (Paul's Alley), for whose ministers, James Foster, D.D. [q. v.], and Joseph Burroughs [q. v.], he preached once or twice. Their liberality is the more remarkable, as Emlyn in his ‘Previous Question’ (1710) had made a radical onslaught on baptism. At length in 1726, on the death of the Exeter heretic, James Peirce [q. v.], his people looked towards Emlyn as his successor. But age was creeping over him, and he would not entertain the proposal.
With the doubtful exception of John Cooper at Cheltenham (d. 1682) Emlyn was the first preacher who described himself as a unitarian, a term introduced by Thomas Firmin [q. v.] . He maintains, however, that he ‘never once’ preached unitarianism, advocating his theology only through the press. His treatises are, as he says, ‘dry speculations,’ but his controversy with David Martin of Utrecht, on the authenticity of 1 John v. 7, has still some interest. Whiston revered him as ‘the first and principal confessor’ of ‘old christianity.’ He was chairman at the weekly meetings of Whiston's ‘Society for Promoting Primitive Christianity’ (started
