Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/714

 700 V. BENCH AND BAR and Sir John Owen, the defendants were convicted by conduct as arbitrary as anything under the Tudors. Serjeant Glyn at the trial of the gallant Penruddock rivalled Coke at Sir Walter Raleigh's trial. The Protector Cromwell cared little for courts or law. The very men who had declaimed against ship money saw Cromwell's arbitrary taxation. Chief Justice Rolle and the judges attempted to try the legahty of such a tax ; but Cromwell sent for them and severely reprehended their license, speaking with ribaldry and contempt of their Magna Charta. He dismissed the judges, saying that they should not suffer lawyers to prate what it would not become them to hear. Serjeant Maynard, who had argued against the tax, was committed to the Tower, while Prynne suffered a fine and imprisonment. Sir Matthew Hale was threatened by Cromwell's government for his strong defense of the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Capel, but Hale replied that he was pleading in support of the law, was doing his duty to his clients, and was not to be daunted by threatenings. During the Cromwellian ascendency, Hale, at the solicitation of the Royalist lawyers, accepted a judgeship. On the circuit he tried and condemned one of Cromwell's soldiers for the mur- der of a Royalist, and had the prisoner hanged so quickly that Cromwell could not grant a reprieve. He quashed a panel of jurors when he found that it had been returned at Cromwell's orders. The Protector, on Hale's return to Lon- don, soundly berated him, telling him that he was not fit to be a judge. Many legal reforms were projected during the Common- wealth, but they came to naught at the Restoration. An attempt was made (among others) to substitute the law of Moses for the common law. There was an earnest attempt to abolish the Court of Chancery, but it was frustrated by St. John. An act was passed regulating chancery practice, but it was found to be impracticable. Most of the better class of lawyers were Royalists and ceased court practice. Confiscation and seizures were the order of the day. But the Royalist conveyancers, Orlando Bridgman and Jeffrey Palmer, while they would not appear in court, enjoyed an immense chamber practice and by their new devices of family