At the upper end, on a raised dais, sat the Lords Commissioners, the
five judges in their scarlet robes and heavy dark periwigs, Baron
Jeffreys of Wem enthroned in the middle place.

The prisoners filed in under guard. The crier called for silence
under pain of imprisonment, and as the hum of voices gradually became
hushed, Mr. Blood considered with interest the twelve good men and
true that composed the jury. Neither good nor true did they look.
They were scared, uneasy, and hangdog as any set of thieves caught
with their hands in the pockets of their neighbours. They were
twelve shaken men, each of whom stood between the sword of the Lord
Chief Justice's recent bloodthirsty charge and the wall of his own
conscience.

From them Mr. Blood's calm, deliberate glance passed on to consider
the Lords Commissioners, and particularly the presiding Judge, that
Lord Jeffreys, whose terrible fame had come ahead of him from
Dorchester.

He beheld a tall, slight man on the young side of forty, with an
oval face that was delicately beautiful. There were dark stains of
suffering or sleeplessness under the low-lidded eyes, heightening
their brilliance and their gentle melancholy. The face was very
pale, save for the vivid colour of the full lips and the hectic
flush on the rather high but inconspicuous cheek-bones. It was
something in those lips that marred the perfection of that
countenance; a fault, elusive but undeniable, lurked there to belie
the fine sensitiveness of those nostrils, the tenderness of those
dark, liquid eyes and the noble calm of that pale brow.