beyond a certain dimension. This practice resembles the method employed by the great Czar Peter to make his subjects change their garb. The queen's prohibition of the "prophesyings," or the assemblies instituted for fanatical prayers and conferences, was founded on a better reason, but shows still the unlimited extent of her prerogative. Any number of persons could not meet together, in order to read the Scriptures and confer about religion, though in ever so orthodox a manner, without her permission. There were many other branches of prerogative incompati. ble with an exact or regular enjoyment of liberty. None of the nobility could marry without permission from the sovereign. The queen detained the earl of Southampton long in prison, because he privately married the earl of Essex's cousin.t No man could travel without the consent of the prince. Sir William Evers underwent a severe persecution because he had presumed to pay a private visit to the king of Scots. The sovereign even assumed a supreme and uncontrolled authority over all foreign trade; and neither allowed any person to enter or depart the kingdom, nor any commodity to be imported or exported, without his consent. The parliament, in the thirteenth of the queen, praised her for not imitating the practice usual among her predecessors, of stopping the course of justice by particular warrants.|| There could not possibly be a greater abuse, nor a stronger mark of arbitrary power; and the queen, in refraining from it, was very laudable. But she was by no means constant in this reserve. There remain in the public records some warrants of hers for exempting particular persons from all law. suits and prosecutions; and these warrants, she says, she grants from her royal prerogative, which she will not allow to he disputed. It was very usual in Queen Elizabeth's reign, and probably in all the preceding reigns, for noblemen or privy counsellors to commit to prison any one who had happened to displease Townsend's Journals, p. 250. Stow's Annals. Strype, vol. ii p. 603. + Birch's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 422. Birch's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 511. Sir John Davis's Question concerning Impositions, passim. Rymer, tom. xv. p. 652, 708, 777. them by suing for his just debts; and the unhappy person, though he gained his cause in the courts of justice, was com monly obliged to relinquish his property in order to obtain his liberty. Some, likewise, who had been delivered from prison by the judges, were again committed to custody in secret places, without any possibility of obtaining relief; and even the officers and serjeants of the courts of law were punished for executing the writs in favor of these persons. Nay, it was usual to send for people by pursuivants, a kind of harpies who then attended the orders of the council and high commission; and they were brought up to London, and constrained by imprisonment, not only to withdraw their lawful suits, but also to pay the pursuivants great sums of money. The judges, in the thirty-fourth of the queen, complain to her majesty of the frequency of this practice. It is probable that so egregious a tyranny was carried no farther down than the reign of Elizabeth; since the parliament who presented the petition of right found no later instances of it.* And even these very judges of Elizabeth, who thus protect the people against the tyranny of the great, expressly allow, that a person committed by special command of the queen is not bailable. It is easy to imagine that, in such a government, no justice could by course of law be obtained of the sovereign, unless he were willing to allow it. In the naval expedition undertaken by Raleigh and Frobisher against the Spaniards, in the year 1592, a very rich carrack was taken, worth two hundred thousand pounds. The queen's share in the adventure was only a tenth; but as the prize was so great, and exceeded so much the expectation of all the adventurers, she was determined not to rest contented with her share. Raleigh humbly and earnestly begged her to accept of a hundred thousand pounds in lieu of all demands, or rather extortions; and says that the present which the proprietors were willing to make her of eighty thousand pounds, was the greatest that ever prince received from a subject.† But it is no wonder the queen, in her administration, should pay so little regard to liberty, while the parliament itself, in enacting laws, was entirely negligent of it. The persecuting statutes which they passed against Papists and Puritans are extremely contrary to the genius of freedom; and by ex • Rushworth, vol. i. p. 511. Franklyn's Annals, p. 250, 251. + Strype, vol. iv. p. 128, 129. posing such multitudes to the tyranny of priests and bigots, accustomed the people to the most disgraceful subjection Their conferring an unlimited supremacy on the queen, or what is worse, acknowledging her inherent right it, was another proof of their voluntary servitude. The law of the twenty-third of her reign, making seditious words against the queen capital, is also a very tyrannical statute; and a use no less tyrannical was sometimes made of it. The case of Udal, a Puritanical clergyman, seems singular even in those arbitrary times. This man had published a book, called a Demonstration of Discipline, in which he inveighed against the government of bishops; and though he had carefully endeavored to conceal his name, he was thrown into prison upon suspicion, and brought to a trial for this offence. It was pretended, that the bishops were part of the queen's political body; and to speak against them, was really to attack her, and was therefore felony by the statute. This was not the only iniquity to which Udal was exposed. The judges would not allow the jury to determine any thing but the fact, whether Udal had written the book or not, without examining his intention, or the import of the words. In order to prove the fact, the crown lawyers did not produce a single witness to the court: they only read the testimony of two persons absent, one of whom said, that Udal had told him he was the author; another, that a friend of Udal's had said so. They would not allow Udal to produce any exculpatory evidence; which, they said, was never to be permitted against the crown. And they tendered him an oath, by which he was required to depose that he was not the author of the book; and his refusal to make that deposition was employed as the strongest proof of his guilt. It is almost needless to add, that notwithstanding these multiplied iniquities, a verdict of death was given by the jury against Udal; for, as the queen was extremely bent upon his prosecution, it was impossible he could escape.† He died in prison, before execution of the sentence. The case of Penry was, if possible, still harder. This man was a zealous Puritan, or rather a Brownist, a small sect, It was never fully established that the prisoner could legally produce evidence against the crown, till after the revolution. See Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 352. + State Trials, vol. i. p. 144. Strype, vol. iv. p. 21. Strype's Life of Whitgift, p. 343. which afterwards increased, and received the name of "Inde pendents." He had written against the hierarchy several tracts, such as Martin Marprelate, Theses Martinianæ, and other compositions, full of low scurrility and petulant satire. After concealing himself for some years, he was seized; and as the statute against seditious words required that the criminal should be tried within a year after committing the offence, he could not be indicted for his printed books. He was therefore tried for some papers found in his pocket, as if he had thereby scattered sedition.* It was also imputed to him, by the lord keeper, Puckering, that in some of these papers, " he had only acknowledged her majesty's royal power to establish laws ecclesiastical and civil; but had avoided the usual terms of making, enacting, decreeing, and ordaining laws; which imply," says the lord keeper, "a most absolute authority."+ Penry for these offences was condemned and executed. Thus we have seen, that the "most absolute" authority of the sovereign, to make use of the lord keeper's expression, was established on above twenty branches of prerogative, which are now abolished, and which were, every one of them, totally incompatible with the liberty of the subject. But what insured more effectually the slavery of the people, than even these branches of prerogative, was, the established principles of the times, which attributed to the prince such an unlimited and indefeasible power, as was supposed to be the origin of all law, and could be circumscribed by none. The homilies published for the use of the clergy, and which they were enjoined to read every Sunday in all the churches, inculcate every where a blind and unlimited passive obedience to the prince, which on no account, and under no pretence, is it ever lawful for subjects in the smallest article to depart from of infringe. Much noise has been made because some court chaplains, during the succeeding reigns, were permitted to preach such doctrines; but there is a great difference be tween these sermons, and discourses published by authority, avowed by the prince and council, and promulgated to the whole nation.‡ So thoroughly were these principles imbibed Strype's Life of Whitgift, book iv. chap. 11. Neal, vol. i. p. 564. † Strype's Annals, vol. iv. p. 177. Gifford, a clergyman, was suspended in the year 1584, for preaching up a limited obedience to the civil magistrate. Neal vol. i. p. 435. by the people, during the reigns of Elizab and her predecessors, that opposition to them was regarded as the most flagrant sedition; and was not even rewarded by that public praise and approbation, which can alone support men under such dangers and difficulties as attend the resistance of tyrannical authority.* It was only during the next generation that the noble principles of liberty took root, and spreading themselves under the shelter of Puritanical absurdities, became fashionable among the people. It is worth remarking, that the advantage usually ascribed to absolute monarchy, a greater regularity of police, and a more strict execution of the laws, did not attend the former English government, though in many respects it fell under that denomination. A demonstration of this truth is contained in a judicious paper which is preserved by Strype,t and which was written by an eminent justice of peace of Somersetshire, in the year 1596, near the end of the queen's reign; when the authority of that princess may be supposed to be fully corroborated by time, and her maxims of government improved by long practice. This paper contains an account of the disorders which then prevailed in the county of Somerset. The author says, that forty persons had there been executed in a year for robberies, thefts, and other felonies; thirty-five burnt in the hand, thirty-seven whipped, one hundred and eighty-three discharged that those who were discharged were most wicked and desperate persons, who never could come to any good, because they would not work, and none would take them into service that notwithstanding this great number of indictments, the fifth part of the felonies committed in the county were not brought to trial; the greater number escaped censure, either from the superior cunning of the felons, the remissness of the magistrates, or the foolish lenity of the people: that the It is remarkable, that in all the historical plays of Shakspeare, where the manners and characters, and even the transactions of the several reigns, are so exactly copied, there is scarcely any mention of civil liberty, which some pretended historians have imagined to be the object of all the ancient quarrels, insurrections, and civil wars, In the elaborate panegyric of England, contained in the tragedy of Richard II., and the detail of its advantages, not a word of its civil constitution, as anywise different from or superior to that of other European kingdoms; an omission which cannot be supposed in any English author that wrote since the restoration, at least since the revolution. + Annals, vol. iv. p. 290 |