Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/722

 708 V. BENCH AND BAR wards the great Chancellor, appeared for the defense. Such a throng never appeared again at a trial in Westminster Hall, until Warren Hastings came back from India to meet an impeachment. The bishops were acquitted, and Wright and his fellows were disgraced. The King filled up his court again; and the legality of martial law in the army then came on for trial before Chief Justice Herbert. At that day in England, in case of a desertion or mutiny, the army officers were powerless, unless they called in the sheriff. But Chief Justice Herbert re- fused to yield to the King's wishes, and held that the army could not be governed by martial law. Again the King cleaned out his court. One of his new tools was Christopher Milton (a brother of the poet). The King called upon his judges to hold that the King by proclamation could dispense with acts of Parliament. Jones, the Chief Justice, refused. He told the King that he was mortified to think that his Majesty thought him capable of a judgment which none but an ignorant or dishonest man could give. The King said that he was determined to have twelve lawyers for judges, all of his way of thinking. Jones replied: "Your Majesty may find twelve judges of your mind, but never twelve lawyers." But the King had now exhausted the pub- lic indulgence and he was soon in flight to France. It would perhaps seem, from the record of this period, that little good could have been accomplished in the devel- opment of the law. But this inference would be an error. We have noticed, at the opening of this epoch, a general feeling that jury -trial was worthless. The work accom- plished by this age was to improve, the methods of jury trials so as to make them promotive of justice. The first thing done in this later period was to make the jury independent, by establishing the rule that they could not be fined or imprisoned for what was conceived to be a false verdict. The second Improvement was to give the courts power to grant new trials, and thus to place the verdict under the control of the judge. The final improvement was to estab- lish the rules of evidence. These rules were so framed and moulded as to exclude from the jury all testimony which