uncovered cask they found a manuscript sermon, never preached, nor designed for the pulpit or the press, never shown to any one. It contained some passages which might excite men to resist tyranny. He was arrested, and thrown into Jail, all his papers seized. The Government resolved to prosecute him for high treason. Francis Bacon, the powerful and corrupt Attorney-General, managed the prosecution. Before trial was ventured upon, he procured an extrajudicial opinion of the Judges appointed for such services, irregularly given, out of court, that they would declare such an act high treason.

But a manuscript sermon, neither preached nor designed for the public, was hardly evidence enough of treason even for such Judges - so purchased, for such an Attorney-so greedy of preferment, with such a Cabinet and such a King. For all those, like the Pharisees of old, "feared the People." So their victim was tortured on the rack, and twelve leading questions prepared by the Government officials, were put to him there. I quote Secretary Winwood's record-still extant in his own handwriting-"He was this day examined before torture, in torture, between torture, and after torture; notwithstanding nothing could be drawn from him, he still persisting in his obstinate and insensible denials and former answers." Bacon was present at the torture, which took place in the Tower, Jan. 19, 1614, O. S. (30th Jan. 1615, N. S.). In August he was tried for high treason"compassing and imagining the King's death"-before a packed jury; against law, and without legal evidence. He was of course found guilty under the ruling of the Court! But public opinion, even then making tyrants “tremble in their capitals," was so indignant at the outrage that the execution was not ventured on, and he was left to languish in Jail, till on the 27th of March, 1616, a King more merciful took the old minister where the wicked cease from troubling.1

In this case, Gentlemen of the Jury, you will notice three violations of the law.

(1.) The opinion of the Judges before the trial was extrajudicial and illegal.

(2.) The application of torture was contrary to law.

(3.) The statute of Treason was wrested to apply to this case

and a crime was constructed by the servants of the court.

It is curious to read the opinion of James himself. "The British Solomon" thus wrote:

"So the only thing the Judges can doubt of is of the delinquent's intention, on his bare denial to clear him [himself], since nature teaches every man to defend his life as he may; and whether in case there was a doubt herein, the Judges should not rather incline to that side [namely, the side of the Government,] wherein all proba

12 St. Tr. 869; 16 Montagu's Bacon, clxvi.; 2 Campbell, 291.

bility lies: but if Judges will needs trust rather the bare negative of an infamous delinquent — then all the probabilities, or rather infallible consequences upon the other part, caring more for the safety of such a monster than the preservation of a crown in all ages following, whereupon depend the lives of many millions, happy then are all desperate and seditious knaves, but the fortune of this crown is more than miserable. Which God forefend."1

3. In 1633, Laud, a tyrannical, ambitious man, and a servile creature of the King, mentioned before, was made Archbishop of Canterbury, continuing Bishop of London at the same time.. Charles I. was strongly inclined to Romanism, Laud also leaned that way, aiming to come as near as possible to the Papal and not be shut out of the English Church. He made some new regulations in regard to the Communion Table and the Lord's Supper. John Williams, before mentioned, Dean of Westminster and Bishop of Lincoln, who had been Lord Keeper under King James, wrote a book against those innovations; besides, in his episcopal court he had once spoken of the Puritans as "good subjects," and of his knowing "that the King did not wish them to be harshly dealt with." In 1637 Laud directed that he should be prosecuted in the Star-Chamber for "publishing false news and tales to the scandal of his Majesty's government;" and "for revealing counsels of State contrary to his oath of a Privy Counsellor." He was sentenced to pay a fine of £10,000,- equal to $50,000, or thrice the sum in these times; to be suspended from all offices, and kept a close prisoner in the Tower during the King's pleasure whence the Revolution set him at liberty. Besides he wrote private letters to Mr. Osbalderston, and called Laud "the little great man," for this he, in 1639, was fined £5,000 to the King, and £3,000 to the Archbishop. Osbalderston in his letters had spoken of the "great Leviathan" and the "little Urchin," and was fined £5,000, to the King, and the same to the Archbishop, and sentenced also to stand in the pillory with his ears nailed to it!2

4. In 1629 Richard Chambers, a merchant of London, complained to the Privy Council of some illegal and unjust treatment, and declared "that the merchants in no part of the world are so screwed and wrung as in England; that in Turkey they have more encouragement." Laud, who hated freedom of speech and liberal comments on the government as much as "eminent citizens" nowadays, is said to have told the king, "If your majesty had many such Chambers, you would soon have no Chamber left to rest in." The merchant was tried before the "commissioners" at the Star-Chamber, and fined £2,000, and condemned to make a "submission for his great offence," which the stout Puritan refused to do, and was kept in

1 2 St. Tr. 879,

23 St. Tr. 769; 2 Campbell, 400.

3 3 St. Tr. 373; Frankyn, 361; 2 Hallam (Paris, 1841), 6 ac etiam 13; 2 Mrs. Macaulay, 16, 45, 65.

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 13 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

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

23 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.

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. 6 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."

"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.”

66

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.'

"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.'

"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!'