Page:Timbs v. Indiana.pdf/19

6 and early 1680s, courts again “imposed ruinous fines on the critics of the crown.” Ibid. In 1680, a committee of the House of Commons “examined the transcripts of all the fines imposed in King’s Bench since 1677” and found that “the Court of King’s Bench, in the Imposition of Fines on Offenders of late Years, hath acted arbitrarily, illegally, and partially; favouring Papists and Persons popishly affected; and excessively oppressing his Majesty’s Protestant Subjects.” Ibid.; 9 Journals of the House of Commons 692 (Dec. 23, 1680). The House of Commons determined that the actions of the judges of the King’s Bench, particularly the actions of Chief Justice William Scroggs, had been so contrary to law that it prepared articles of impeachment against him. The articles alleged that Scroggs had “most notoriously departed from all Rules of Justice and Equality, in the Imposition of Fines upon Persons convicted of Misdemeanors” without “any Regard to the Nature of the Offences, or the Ability of the Persons.” Id., at 698.

Yet “[o]ver the next few years fines became even more excessive and partisan.” Schwoerer 91. The King’s Bench, presided over by the infamous Chief Justice Jeffreys, fined Anglican cleric Titus Oates 2,000 marks (among other punishments) for perjury. Id., at 93. For speaking against the Duke of York, the sheriff of London was fined £100,000 in 1682, which corresponds to well over $10 million in present-day dollars –“an amount, which, as it extended to the ruin of the criminal, was directly contrary to the spirit of [English] law.” The History of England Under the House of Stuart, pt. 2, p. 801 (1840). The King’s Bench fined Sir Samuel Barnadiston £10,000 for allegedly seditious letters, a fine that was overturned by the House of