The first step taken by the prisoner's counsel was to state that they appeared for John Frost alone, and should challenge the jury separately: on which all the other prisoners were removed from the bar, John Frost remaining to take his trial alone. Then came the swearing of the jury--the name of every one, with his calling in life, and place of abiding, being known to the prisoner and his counsel, who objected to the very first step taken by the clerk of the Crown. He had begun to call over the names in their alphabetical order on the panel--the usual course for a great series of years; but Sir Frederick Pollock objected to his doing so, insisting on each juror's name being taken from the ballot-box. The Lord Chief-Justice was about to have overruled the objection; but the Attorney-General intimated that he consented to the course proposed by the prisoner's counsel. Each witness was sworn first on the _voir dire_, (_i. e._ _dicere verum_) as to his qualification, before he was sworn to try. First came a juryman who was challenged peremptorily on the part of the Crown; but the prisoner's counsel, doubtless for very good reasons, wishing him to remain on the jury, insisted, first, that the Crown had no such right--an objection at once overruled; secondly, that the crown was too late, as the juror had actually got the New Testament into his hand to be sworn to try before the Crown challenged. But, on the court's inquiry, it turned out that the witness had himself taken the book, without having been directed to do so by the clerk of the Crown. Under these circumstances, the court decided that the Crown were in time with their challenge--and the juryman was excluded. In this kind of out-skirmishing the whole of the first day was consumed!--a full jury not having been sworn till the evening, when they were "charged" with the prisoner and then dismissed for the night--but with the unpleasant information from the court, that they themselves were thenceforth prisoners (though with every kind of proper indulgence) till the trial was over.