CHAMBERS, ELIOT, LEIGHTON.

29

prison till the Court of King's Bench, faithful to the law, on Habeas Corpus, admitted him to bail: for which they were reprimanded. Laud and all the ecclesiastical members of the "commission" wished his fine £3,000.

5. In his place in Parliament in 1629, Sir John Eliot, one of the noblest men in England's noblest age, declared that "the Council and Judges had all conspired to trample underfoot the liberties of the subject." Gentlemen, the fact was as notorious as the advance of the Slave Power now is in America. But a few days after the king (Charles I.) had dismissed his refractory Parliament, Eliot, with Hollis, Long, Selden, Strode, and Valentine, most eminent members of the commons, and zealous for liberty and law, was seized by the king's command and thrown into prison. The Habeas Corpus was demanded it was all in vain, for Laud and Strafford were at the head of affairs, and the priests and pliant Judges in Westminster HallJones was one of them-clove down the law of the land just as their subcatenated successors did in Boston in 1851. The court decreed that they should be imprisoned during the king's pleasure, and not released until making submission and giving security for good behavior. Eliot was fined £2,000, Hollis and Valentine in smaller sums. Eliot the brave man - refused submission, and died in the Tower. Thus was the attack made on all freedom of speech in Parliament! 1

6. In 1630, the very year of the first settlement of Boston, on the 4th of June, Rev. Dr. Alexander Leighton was brought before the Court of High Commission, in the Star-Chamber, to be tried for a seditious libel. He had published "An Appeal to the Parliament, or a Plea against Prelacy," a work still well known, remonstrating against certain notorious grievances in church and State, "to the end. the Parliament might take them into consideration and give such redress as might be for the honor of the king, the quiet of the people, and the peace of the church," the court of commissions accounted it "a most odious and heinous offence, deserving the most serious punishment the court could inflict, for framing a book so full of such pestilent, devilish, and dangerous assertions." The two Chief Justices declared if the case had been brought to their courts, they would have proceeded against him for Treason, and it was only "his majesty's exceeding great mercy and goodness" which selected the milder tribunal. His sentence was a fine of £10,000, to be set in the pillory, whipped, have one ear cut off, one side of his nose slit, one cheek branded with S. S., Sower of Sedition, and then at some convenient time be whipped again, branded, and mutilated on the other

1 3 St. Tr. 293; 1 Rushworth; 2 Hallam, 2; 2 Parl. Hist. 488, 504; Foster's Eliot, 100; 2 Mrs. Macaulay, ch. i. ii.

side, and confined in the Fleet during life! Before the punishment could be inflicted he escaped out of prison, but was recaptured and the odious sentence fully executed. Those who "obstructed" the officer in the execution of that "process" were fined £500 a piece.1 Gentlemen of the Jury, which do you think would most have astonished the Founders of Massachusetts, then drawing near to Boston, that trial on the 4th of June, 1630, or this trial, two hundred and twenty-five years later? At the court of Charles it was a great honor to mutilate the body of a Puritan minister.

But not only did such judges thus punish the most noble men who wrote on political matters, there was no freedom of speech allowed — so logical is despotism!

7. William Prynn, a zealous Puritan and a very learned lawyer, wrote a folio against theatres called "a Scourge for Stage-Players," dull, learned, unreadable and uncommon thick. He was brought to the Star-Chamber in 1632-3, and Chief Justice Richardson - who had even then "but an indifferent reputation for honesty and veracity" gave this sentence: "Mr. Prynn, I do declare you to be a Schism-Maker in the Church, a Sedition-Sower in the Commonwealth, a wolf in sheep's clothing; in a word 'omnium malorum nequissimus [the wickedest of all scoundrels]. I shall fine him £10,000, which is more than he is worth, yet less than he deserveth; I will not set him at liberty, no more than a plagued man or a mad dog, who though he cannot bite, yet will he foam; he is so far from being a sociable soul that he is not a rational soul; he is fit to live in dens with such beasts of prey as wolves and tygers like himself; therefore I do condemn him to perpetual Imprisonment, as those monsters that are no longer fit to live among men nor to see light." "I would have him branded in the forehead, slit in the nose, and his ears cropped too." The sentence was executed the 7th and 10th of May, 1633.2 But nothing intimidated, the sturdy man committed other offences of like nature, "obstructing" other "officers," and was punished again, and banished. But on the summoning of Parliament returned to England, and became powerful in that Revolution which crushed the tyrants of the time.

8. In 1685, James II. was in reality a Catholic. He wished to restore Romanism to England and abolish the work of the Reformation, the better to establish the despotism which all of his family had sought to plant. He was determined to punish such as spoke against the Papal Church, though no law prohibited such speaking. Judge

2

13 St. Tr. 383; Laud's Diary, 4th November; 2 Hallam, 28.

3 St. Tr. 561; 2 Hallam, 28, and his authorities. See also 2 Echard, 109, et seq., 124, et seq., 202, 368, 510; the remarks of Hume, Hist. ch. lii., remind me of the tone of the fugitive slave bill Journals of Boston in 1850-54.

BAXTER IN JEFFREYS' COURT.

31

Jeffreys, a member of the cabinet and favorite of the king, was at that time chief justice — abundantly fit for the work demanded of him. The pious and venerable Richard Baxter was selected for the victim. Let Mr. Macaulay tell the story.

"In a Commentary on the New Testament, he had complained, with some bitterness, of the persecution which the Dissenters suffered. That men, who, for not using the Prayerbook, had been driven from their homes, stripped of their property, and locked up in dungeons, should dare to utter a murmur, was then thought a high crime against the State and Church. Roger Lestrange, the champion of the government, and the oracle of the clergy, sounded the note of war in the Observator. An information was filed. Baxter begged that he might be allowed some time to prepare for his defence. It was on the day on which Oates was pilloried in Palace Yard that the illustrious chief of the Puritans, oppressed by age and infirmities, came to Westminster Hall to make this request. Jeffreys burst into a storm of rage. Not a minute,' he cried, to save his life. I can deal with saints as well as with sinners. There stands Oates on one side of the pillory; and if Baxter stood on the other, the two greatest rogues in the kingdom would stand together."

6

"When the trial came on at Guildhall, a crowd of those who loved and honored Baxter, filled the court. At his side stood Doctor William Bates, one of the most eminent Nonconformist divines. Two Whig barristers of great note, Pollexfen and Wallop, appeared for the defendant."

"Pollexfen had scarce begun his address to the jury, when the chief justice broke forth Pollexfen, I know you well. I will set a mark on you. You are the patron of the faction. This is an old rogue, a schismatical knave, a hypocritical villain. He hates the Liturgy. He would have nothing but longwinded cant without book;' and then his lordship turned up his eyes, clasped his hands, and began to sing through his nose in imitation of what he supposed to be Baxter's style of praying, 'Lord, we are thy people, thy peculiar people, thy dear people.' Pollexfen gently reminded the court that his late majesty had thought Baxter deserving of a bishopric. And what ailed the old blockhead then,' cried Jeffreys, 'that he did not take it?' His fury now rose almost to madness. He called Baxter a dog, and swore that it would be no more than justice to whip such a villain through the whole city."

6

"Wallop interposed, but fared no better than his leader. You are in all these dirty causes, Mr. Wallop,' said the judge. Gentlemen of the long robe ought to be ashamed to assist such factious knaves.' The advocate made another attempt to obtain a hearing, but to no purpose. 'If you do not know your duty,' said Jeffreys, 'I will teach it you.'

66

Wallop sat down, and Baxter himself attempted to put in a word; but the chief justice drowned all expostulation in a torrent of ribaldry and invective, mingled with scraps of Hudibras. My lord,' said the old man, 'I have been much blamed by Dissenters for speaking respectfully of bishops.'

6

6

"Baxter for bishops!' cried the judge; that's a merry conceit indeed. I know what you mean by bishops - rascals like yourself, Kidderminster bishops, factious, snivelling Presbyterians!'

"Again Baxter essayed to speak, and again Jeffreys bellowed, 'Richard, Richard, dost thou think we will let thee poison the court? Richard, thou art an old knave. Thou hast written books enough to load a cart, and every book as full of sedition as an egg is full of meat. By the grace of God, I'll look after thee. I see a great many of your brotherhood waiting to know what will befall their mighty Don. And there,' he continued, fixing his savage eye on Bates, there is a doctor of the party at your elbow. But, by the grace of God Almighty, I will crush you all!'

"Baxter held his peace. But one of the junior counsel for the defence made a last effort, and undertook to show that the words of which complaint was made, would not bear the construction put on them by the information. With this view he began to read the context. In a moment he was roared down. You sha'n't turn the court into a conventicle!' The noise of weeping was heard from some of those who surrounded Baxter. Snivelling calves!' said the judge."1

He was sentenced to pay a fine of 500 marks, to lie in prison till he paid it, and be bound to good behavior for seven years. Jeffreys, it is said, wished him also to be whipped at the tail of a cart.2 But the King remitted his fine.

Throughout the reign of James II. the courts of law became more and more contemptible in the eyes of the people. "All the three common law courts were filled by incompetent and corrupt Judges." 3 But their power to do evil never diminished.

9. James II. wished to restore the Catholic form of religion, rightly looking on Protestantism as hostile to his intended tyranny; so he claimed a right to dispense with the laws relating thereto, put a Jesuit into his Privy Council, expelled Protestants from their offices, and filled the vacancy thus illegally made with Papists; he appointed Catholic bishops. In 1688 he published a proclamation. It was the second of the kind,- dispensing with all the laws of the realm against Catholicism; and ordered it to be read on two specified Sundays during the hours of service in all places of public worship. This measure seemed to be a special insult to the Protestants. The declaration of indulgence was against their conscience, and in violation of the undisputed laws of the land, but Chief Justice Wright declared from the bench his opinion that it was "legal and obligatory," and on the day appointed for reading the decree attended church "to give weight to the solemnity," and as it was not read for the clerk "had forgot to bring a copy," he "indecently in the hearing of the congregation abused the priest, as disloyal, seditious, and irreligious."

But the clergy thought differently from the Chief Justice - Episcopalians and Dissenters agreeing on this point. Seven bishops petitioned the King that they might not be obliged to violate their conscience, the articles of their religion, and the laws of the realm, by reading the declaration. They presented their petition in person to the King, who treated it and them with insolence and wrath.

"The king, says Kennet, was not contented to have this declaration published in the usual manner, but he was resolved to have it solemnly read in all churches as the

11 Macaulay, (Harper's Ed.) 456-8.

32 Campbell's Justices, 87.

2 1 Macaulay, 456; 11 St. Tr. 493.

See 2 Brewster's Newton, 108.

political gospel of his reign. The bishops and clergy were, of all others the most averse to the subject-matter of the declaration, as being most sensible of the ill design and ill effects of it; and therefore the court seemed the more willing to mortify these their enemies, and make them become accessory to their own ruin; and even to eat their own dung, as father Petre proudly threatened, and therefore this order of council was made and published."1

The petition was printed and published with great rapidity, the bishops were seized, thrown into the Tower, and prosecuted in the court for a "false, feigned, malicious, pernicious, and seditious"

libel.

Judge Allybone thus addressed the Jury.

"And I think, in the first place, that no man can take upon him to write against the actual exercise of the government, unless he have leave from the government, but he makes a libel, be what he writes true or false; for if once we come to impeach the government by way of argument, it is the argument that makes it the government, or not the government. So that I lay down that, in the first place, the government ought not to be impeached by argument, nor the exercise of the government shaken by argument; because I can manage a proposition, in itself doubtful, with a better another man; this, say I, is a libel.

pen than

"Then I lay down this for my next position, that no private man can take upon him to write concerning the government at all; for what has any private man to do with the government, if his interest be not stirred or shaken? It is the business of the government to manage matters relating to the government; it is the business of subjects to mind only their own properties and interests. If my interest is not shaken, what have I to do with matters of government? They are not within my sphere. If the government does come to shake my particular interest, the law is open for me, and I may redress myself by law; and when I intrude myself into other men's business that does not concern my particular interest, I am a libeller.

“These I have laid down for plain propositions; now, then, let us consider further, whether, if I will take upon me to contradict the government, any specious pretence that I shall put upon it, shall dress it up in another form and give it a better denomination? And truly I think it is the worse, because it comes in a better dress; for by that rule, every man that can put on a good vizard, may be as mischievous as he will, to the government at the bottom, so that, whether it be in the form of a supplication, or an address, or a petition, if it be what it ought not to be, let us call it by its true name, and give it its right denomination—it is a libel.”

"The government here has published such a declaration as this that has been read, relating to matters of government; and shall, or ought anybody to come and impeach that as illegal, which the government has done? Truly, in my opinion, I do not think he should, or ought; for by this rule may every act of the government be shaken, when there is not a parliament de facto sitting.

"When the house of lords and commons are in being, it is a proper way of applying to the king; there is all the openness in the world for those that are members of parliament, to make what addresses they please to the government, for the rectifying, altering, regulating, and making of what law they please; but if every private man shall come and interpose his advice, I think there can never be an end of advising the government.

1 12 St. Tr. 239.