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CHARLES I.

(1625—1649.)

I.’s reign is remarkable as being the first since Richard III. which contains no legislation on the law of treason, we also meet with comparatively few trials for this offence. In Lord Strafford’s case and in several cases before Parliament the constructive interpretation of the law was extended, but in the trials before the ordinary courts of Justice the Judges cannot be said to have strained the law, as was the case in preceding reigns. One case is especially remarkable as being a clear decision in favour of the subject. What had been firmly settled in the last reign, that words amounted to an overt act of treason we now find distinctly denied by the Judges to be law, and altogether there is an advance in the direction of fairness in the trials, the most notable exception is the trial of Charles himself, but to so exceptional a case the ordinary rules can hardly be applied. As has been said, of statutes on the subject of treason there are none. One only, the 3 Charles I. c. 2, indirectly relates to the subject, as being part of the law against the Catholics. It was intended to make the law still more severe by extending the provisions against Catholics in the Statute 3 James I. c. 5, and so still further to check the practice of English subjects going abroad and recruiting the Catholic seminaries. The act is entitled “An Act to restrain the passing or sending of any to be popishly bred beyond the seas,” and is as follows:

“Forasmuch as divers ill affected persons to the true religion established within this realm have sent their children into foreign parts to be bred up in popery notwithstanding the restraint thereof by the statute made in the first year of our late sovereign lord King James of famous memory be it