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or hear prayers or divine service, or go about to persuade others to impugn her Majesty's power in causes ecclesiastical, or to persuade others to forbear going to church to hear divine service, that he should, upon convic tion, be committed to prison, there to remain without bail or mainprise until willing to go to church, or listen to divine service. The only humane feature of this law was the proviso that it was not to extend to woman or Popish recusants. The instances of par ties claiming that they were less than sixteen years of age were numerous, and led to a general discontinuance of the growth of beards. In the reign of James I., if any dangerous or incorrigible rogue was found begging or wandering in the lanes or streets, he should be branded in the shoulder with the letter "R " and be sent to the place of his last dwell ing, and if that could not be ascertained, then to the place of his birth; while idle and wandering soldiers or mariners were adjudged to be felons, without benefit of clergy. In the first year of James I. there was a general codification of the law against con juration and enchantment, and it was enacted that " if any person should use drugs, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit, or should consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any wicked or evil spirit; or take up any dead man, woman or child out of his or their grave, or any other place, or the skin, bone, or any other part of any dead person, to be employed in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm or enchantment, or should use drugs, or exercise any witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment, whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body, or any part thereof," he should suffer death as a felon, without clergy: and " if any person take upon him by witchcraft or sorcery to tell wherein treasure of gold or silver might be found, or where lost or stolen goods could

be found, or employed sorcery with the in tent to provoke any person to unlawful love, or whereby any cattle or goods or any per son should be destroyed, wasted or impaired," he should, upon the first conviction, suffer one year's imprisonment without bail, and once a quarter stand two hours in the pillory, and publicly confess his fault; and if, after conviction, he commit a like offence, and be convicted and attaint of the second offence, he should suffer death as a felon, without clergy. No new felonies were enacted in the time of King Charles I. Such then, is a general review of the condition of English Crim inal Law at the time that Sir Matthew Hale closed his work upon the Pleas of the Crown. We now glance at a few specific instances to be found in the State Trials. In 1637, which was the thirteenth year of the reign of Charles I., proceedings were in stituted in the Star Chamber against William Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick. Prynne was a barrister-at-law, Bastwick was a physician, and Burton was a clergyman. The offence charged against them was that they had published books reflecting upon the Court and the Church, and at their trial they were roughly handled, being denied the assistance of counsel, or a fair opportunity to speak. They were each condemned to lose their ears in the palace yard at Westminster, to be fined five thousand pounds, and to undergo perpetual imprisonment in three remote places of the Kingdom; to which Finch, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, added that he condemned Prynne to be stigma tized in the cheeks with two letters " S" and "L" for a seditious libeller, to which all the lords agreed. Prynne behaved with great courage. When the executioner had cut off one ear, which he had cut deep and close to the head, in a cruel manner, he never flinched, moved, nor stirred, although an artery had been cut, so that the blood ran streaming