Keeper of the City Gates

While the British army held Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War, a man was charged with high treason against Pennsylvania. The prosecution offered evidence that he had taken a commission from the British king to watch and guard the gates of the city, with power to grant passes into and out of the occupied city, and that he had taken a quantity of salt from people he called "Rebels." The defence attacked the indictment itself, arguing that it was vague, that no overt act was expressly or particularly set out, that the facts were charged too uncertainly to give him fair notice of what he had to answer, and that the whole indictment lacked proper form and substance.