Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/587

] Catherine Howard; but growing perfectly frantic with wrath and shame on finding himself married to an unchaste woman whom he had proclaimed an angel, he went a step further, and denounced the terrors of high treason against any woman who should dare to marry him if she had been incontinent before marriage, and against all such persons as should know of this and should not warn the king in time. When to these unexampled statutes we add that of 31 Henry VIII., c. 14, which abolished all "Diversity of opinions," and that of 34 and 35 Henry VIII., c. 1, for the "Advancement of true religion and abolishment of the contrary," we have exhibited the most perfect example of what a man may become by the intoxication of unlimited power.

Besides particular laws, Henry VIII. erected two now courts of justice—the Court of the Steward of the Marshal-sea, for the trial of all treasons, murders, manslaughters, and blows by which blood was shed in any of the palaces or houses of the king during his residence there; and the Court of the President and Council of the North. This latter court was established in the thirty-first year of his reign to try the rioters who had risen against his suppression of the lesser monasteries; but it included all the powers vested in the king's own council, and not only decided such civil cases as were brought before it, but was armed with authority, by secret instructions from the crown, to inquire into presumed illegalities, and to bring before it alleged offenders against the prerogatives of the king; and was made such oppressive use of by Strafford in the time of Charles I. as led to its abolition in the sixteenth year of that reign. As to the actual administration of the laws under the great Tudor despot, Reeve, in his History of the Laws of England, says:—"If we are to judge of the criminal law in this reign by the trials which have come down to us, it appears that the lives of the people were entirely in the hands of the crown. A trial seems to have been nothing more than a formal method of signifying the will of the prince, and of displaying his power to gratify it. The newly-invented treasons, as they were large in their conception, and of an insidious import, by giving a scope to the uncandid mode of inquiry then practised, enlarged the powers of oppression beyond all bounds."

To the honour of Edward VI. and his counsellors, all these arbitrary acts of his father were abolished by him: the law of treason was restored to its state under the statute of 25 Edward III.; religion was again set free, and proclamations by the king in council were declared to have no longer the force of Acts of Parliament. A few years, however, introduced Queen Mary, and a reversal of the state religion and all its laws. That dreadful persecution which we have narrated, and which is one of the darkest spots in the history of the world, was carried on to force the human mind into its former thraldom; and an attempt was made by the Spanish power which was then introduced to restore arbitrary rule by a singular suggestion. Charles V. of Spain presented, through his ambassador, a book to the queen, in which the principle was laid down that as she was the first queen regnant, none of the limitations which had been set to the prerogative of her ancestors the kings of England, applied to her, but to kings only; and that by consequence she was free and absolute. This book Mary showed to Gardiner, and asked his opinion of it, which was that it was a pernicious book, and could work her no good. Thereupon Mary threw the book into the fire; and Gardiner, on the plea of defining and establishing her authority, brought in an act, which, giving her the same powers as the kings before her possessed, consequently restrained her within the same limits.

Mary confirmed the act of her late brother, confining the law of treason to the statute of the 25th of Edward III.; nor does she seem to have created fresh treasons, except in one instance—making it treasonable to counterfeit not merely the coin of the realm, but also such coins as circulated there by Royal consent.

Once more the reformed religion was restored on the accession of Elizabeth; and, like her father, she was not only declared supreme head of the Church, but she assumed all his claims of supreme authority in the State. She frequently told her Parliament that it existed entirely by her will and pleasure; and when the members entered on matters disagreeable to her, she snubbed them in language which sounds oddly enough in these days of high Parliamentary privilege. By the very first statute passed in her reign, she proceeded to set up a new Court, ignored everything like Magna Charta and the right of jury, making her own will the entire law, and placing every subject, with his life and property, at her mercy. This was the Court of High Commission, which assumed all the pretensions of the Star Chamber, but was directed more especially to ecclesiastical affairs. The queen was empowered to appoint by letters patent, whenever she thought proper, such persons, being natural-born subjects, as she pleased, to execute all jurisdiction concerning spiritual matters, and to visit, reform, and redress all errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, offences, &c., which by any ecclesiastical authority might be lawfully ordered or corrected. The Reformers were only too eager to put this formidable engine into her hands, because it was to crush the Romish hierarchy; but they did not reflect that it could on occasion be employed against themselves, as Laud and Strafford afterwards demonstrated to their children. This inquisitorial court was armed with authority to employ torture to effect the necessary confessions, and its jurisdiction was extended to the punishment of breaches of the marriage vow, and all misdemeanours and disorders in that state. It was, therefore, sanctioned in forcing its operations into the very bosom of social and domestic life, and presents an aspect most fearful, and calculated effectually to lay the subject prostrate at the feet of the sovereign.

Elizabeth, indeed, was fully as arrogant and despotic as her father; and nothing but her lion-like resolution, her choice of able and unscrupulous ministers, and the cunning of her government, could have enabled her to maintain her sway so successfully as she did. The homage due to her sex no doubt also contributed essentially to this result. Yet not all these circumstances could prevent her clearly perceiving that her power was silently and even rapidly waning before that of the public. She frequently had to tell persons that they dared not have done or said certain things in her father's time. She had repeatedly to concede the point to the pertinacity of her Parliament; especially so when, towards the end of her reign, the House of Commons