1737 November 21 (Monday). I rode up to Worcester to see Hugh Henderson again. Was sorry to find he had tried to make his escape by filing the Goal[1] door. We talked more of other matters, and kept longer off from the main point of his case than heretofore. I’m more put to it to judge of his Frame. Mr. Burr came to me, requested me to preach to him on Wednesday. Hugh desired it of me, and several of the people repeatedly and urgently insist and plead for it. I prayed with the prisoner and took leave at about seven o’clock. N.B. His Discourses of the Jury, not going by the laws of God and the Country in Condemning him, having but Circumstantial Evidence. As to Newton, he offered him all reasonable Satysfaction etc. But he added, that he was guilty, and his many sins had provoked God to anger etc.
I called at Mr. Cushings and supped there. Thence I rode home.
[1]Forbes: The goal or jail where Hugh Henderson was confined stood on the west side of Lincoln Street, a short distance from Lincoln Square. It was a building forty-one feet by eighteen. “The prison part,” writes Caleb Wall, “was eighteen feet square, made of white oak timber set with studs, four inches thick and five inches broad, and floored, roofed and ceiled with two-inch planks spiked together. A stone dungeon was underneath. The north end of the structure, finished as a dwelling, afterwards became part of the old ‘Handcock Arms.’” Probably at this time it was the dwelling-house of the jailer, Luke Brown.