Page:Letters of Junius, volume 2 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/339

Rh the statute of Richard the third, the power of bailing was a little enlarged; every justice of peace was authorised to bail for felony; but they were expressly confined to persons arrested on light suspicion; and even this power, so limited, was found to produce such inconveniences, that in three years after the legislature found it necessary to repeal it. Instead of trusting any longer to a single justice of peace, the act of 3d. Henry VIIth. repeals the preceding act, and directs, "that no prisoner (of those who are mainpernable by the law) shall be let to bail or mainprize by less than two justices, whereof one to be of the quorum." And so indispensably necessary was this provision thought for the administration of justice, and for the security and peace of society, that at this time an oath was proposed by the king, to be taken by the knights and esquires of his household, by the members of the house of commons, and by the peers spiritual and temporal, and accepted and sworn to quasi una voce by them all, which, among other engagements, binds them "not to let any man to bail or mainprize, knowing and deeming