Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/589

] With respect to not browbeating juries or coercing them, as asserted by Knight to have been rare, scarcely anything can be read with more astonishment, when we recolllect that this was in the days of Scroggs and Jeffreys. Perhaps in no reign, referring to Knight's own pages, was there a more frightful disregard to the independence of juries or of witnesses. Knight does admit that Penn and Meads jury were coerced and fined, but treats that as a rare case. It were easy to furnish, from Besse's "History of the Sufferings of the Friends,"' scores—we might almost say hundreds—of such cases, to say nothing of the trials of other dissenters and state prisoners. So far from Jeffreys desisting from the practice of coercing juries and browbeating witnesses, after judge Vaughan had reversed the decision of the court of Old Bailey in Penn's case in 1670, we find him, in 1685, in the succeeding reign, indulging in the utmost licence of that kind. Take, for example, the trial of Alice Lisle, for harbouring a refugee from the battle of Sedgemoor, one of Monmouth's officers, where, as Macaulay shows, he coerced and abused the jury till they gave a verdict contrary to their own convictions; and his treatment of one of the witnesses was such—threatening him with hell-fire and the like—that the man became dumb with terror.

But most unfortunate of all is the assertion of Knight that there was an "extinction of torture in Charles's reign." Why this is the reign of the battles of Rullion Green, Bothwell Bridge, and of Drumclog! This was the reign under which the covenanters were driven to desperation, and roused to rebellion by the indiscriminate disregard to every principle of civil or religious right in their cases, and this the period of the horrors perpetrated on them by Tweeddale, Lauderdale, James duke of York, Claverhouse, Turner, and other officers. This was the time when the thumbscrews and iron boot wore in infernal operation, and James sate and gloated on the agonies of the sufferers which drove from the scene the most hardened of the other persecutors. Torture extinguished in the reign of Charles II.! never was it in more general or more diabolical operation—torture, physical and mental, torture applied to the person, the conscience, and the estate. Such falsifications of history demand the fullest exposure; and for that we need only refer the reader to the very pages of those who would thus represent the fact.

Under James, when he came to the throne, tyranny assumed a new shape. His design was to establish popery, and therefore he withdrew the persecutions of the dissenters, and even attempted to repeal the test act. But his intentions wore too transparent; all parties took the alarm at the idea of the restored dominance of the catholics, and therefore all parties in the state, except a few of the dissenters who had groaned the most bitterly under the tortures of persecution, were united against him. It was a question of life or death to the Anglican church; and a church persecuting and the same persecuted were found to be two different things. The church and all its aristocratic supporters, presbyterians, independents, were all now united for one object—to drive out the popish king, and they did it. It was fortunate for liberty that James, within the short space of three years, crowded more uncompromising acts of arbitrary defiance of the constitution, and more of ferocious cruelty than had been exhibited in England since the reign of Henry VIII. The spirit of the nation and of parliament; which was beginning to show itself again even before the death of Charles, was now effectually roused to be rid of the Stuart dynasty altogether. It was then found, rather than in Charles's reign, that the spirit of Hampden, Cromwell, Selden, Pym, and the rest of the great men of the commonwealth, had rather slumbered than was dead, and that their acts were still destined to be the salvation of the nation.

Besides the passing of the habeas corpus act, as already referred to, during this period, parliament made some progress in defining the peculiar business and privileges of each house. On the lords resuming their legislative powers at the restoration, they resumed the right of appeal to them from the courts of common law and of the court of chancery, which they had long exercised as the supreme court of judicature as well as of legislation. But after the restoration the lords proceeded to receive appeals from the courts of equity, against which extension of privilege the commons remonstrated, and soon came into actual collision, from the circumstance that some of the parties appealed against were members of the commons' house. This the commons resented as a breach of their privileges, which exempted their members from legal process during the session of the house. In 1667 the lords went further than appeals, and entertained an original application to them from Thomas Skinner, a merchant of London, against the East India Company. This the commons resented as not only a breach of privilege—inasmuch as the lords had fined Sir Samuel Barnardiston, the governor of the East India Company, and imprisoned him, the said Sir Samuel being a member of their house—but they denied the right of the lords to entertain original suits at all. The collision was violent and prolonged, and was only got rid of by the king advising them to erase all proceedings on the subject from their respective journals. This settled the question of the lords entertaining original suits, but not the right of appeal from courts of equity; and in 1675 the lords again entertained an appeal of Dr. Thomas Shirley against Sir John Fagg, who being also a member of the house of commons, was resisted by the commons on the score of privilege. The contest was only got rid of by parliament being prorogued for upwards of a year, namely, from November, 1675, to February, 1677, after which this particular appeal was never revived, but the lords continued to exercise their claim to decide appeals from the courts of equity.

Another point which the commons at this period asserted and carried out was the right of originating all money bills, and everything which went to lay a charge on the people. Anciently grants of supply were made separately each house, and the clergy granted for themselves in convocation; but about the middle of the fourteenth century the two houses fell into the practice of granting supplies jointly. In the reigns of Elizabeth and James the form changed to that of the commons granting with consent of the lords. It began to be felt by the commons that, as they were the immediate representatives of the people, it was their particular duty to discharge this function. As the commons during the commonwealth became the sole legislative power,