tenures be turned into common soccage. Purveyance and composition for purveyance were done away with. These were such boons to the aristocracy, that they did not forget, as we have seen, to bargain for their continuance on the return of kingship, though they took care to leave their feudal claim of manorial rights and copyhold fees in force.
The very important practices of granting new trials on account of defective evidence, excessive damages, or provable partiality of juries, and of the introduction of special juries themselves, appear to have been introduced during the period of the commonwealth; under which those oppressive engines of royalty, the courts of High Commission and Star-chamber, wore also swept away.
One of the first acts of monarchy was to declare all the acts and proceedings of the parliaments and protectorate of the commonwealth null and void. The act, making it incumbent to call a fresh parliament within three years of the dissolution of another, was thrown into the common wreck; and all that Charles I. had perilled his head by insisting on was replaced in its tyrannous activity, except the courts of the Star-chamber and High Commission, which were too odious oven for those subservient times. Yet Mr. Hallam, in his constitutional history, has asserted that "the fundamental privileges of the subject were less invaded, the prerogative swerved into fewer excesses during the reign of Charles II. than perhaps in any former period of equal length. Thanks," he says, "to the patient energies of Selden and Elliot, of Pym and Hampden, the constitutional boundaries of royal power had been so well established, that no minister was daring enough to attempt any general and flagrant violation of them." These extraordinary assertions have been also copied by other historians. Extraordinary they must appear after the perusal of our preceding chapters of this monarch's reign. True, he and his ministers did not dare formally to abolish Magna Charta or the Petition of Rights, nor even to revive the courts of the Star-chamber and High Commission; but they discovered the means of leaving the securities of the constitution dead letters. It is true that Charles was compelled to call together parliaments more frequently to supply his necessities; but when they failed to do this, he had a resource in selling himself and all the best interests of his country to the French king for money. But admitting that he was more politic in his treatment of parliament than his father or grandfather, was he less tyrannic, or did he less invade the laws and liberties of the country? Have we forgotten that he enslaved every considerable corporation in the country, including that of London, by arbitrarily suppressing their ancient charters by writs of quo warranto, and thus compelled them to return such members to parliament as he chose? That he pursued a similar course in the counties, obtaining from venal and arbitrarily-appointed sheriffs similar returns? That with these packed parliaments he drained the country of money to spend on his parasites and mistresses, and to the neglect and damage of all the vital interests of the nation? Was this no invasion of the fundamental privileges of the subject? no exercise of excess in the prerogative? The fundamental privileges of the subject were swamped altogether in the substitution of mock parliaments for real representatives of the people.
Have we forgot, too, that judge after judge was set aside till Charles had found men subservient enough to pass such judgments as he pleased Mr. Hallam says, "There were no means of chastising political delinquencies except through the regular tribunals of justice, and through the verdict of a jury." Were those regular tribunals, when even the juries who were to try the regicides were notoriously to be packed, and the trials were not allowed to take place till new and subservient sheriffs were appointed? Ludlow, one of them who had escaped to Switzerland, says:—"This important business was delayed during the time that Mr. Love was to continue sheriff of London, he being no way to be induced, either by fear or hopes, to permit juries to be packed in order to second the designs of the court." By such juries, and before commissioners including such men as Monk and Shaftesbury, who had sworn that none of their old political friends should suffer by the restoration—before the renegades Denzell Hollis, Montague earl of Sandwich, Clarendon, Saye and Sele, and members of such, besides their declared enemies, the duke of Ormond, the earl of Berkshire, &c., were tried and condemned Harrison, Scrope, Vane, and the rest of them. What regular trials and what juries had the unfortunate catholics who perished under the base evidence of such men as Titus Oates, Bedloe, Prance, Dugdale, and that perjured crew? What constitutional protection under such judges as Jeffreys, and Treby, and Scroggs, with tory sheriffs and packed tory juries, had lord Russell and Algernon Sidney? "Convictions," says Macaulay, "were obtained without difficulty from tory juries, and rigorous punishments were inflicted by courtly judges. With these criminal proceedings were joined civil proceedings scarcely less formidable."
With such means for modelling judges and constituting juries, there was no need to obstruct the operations of writs of habeas corpus (Charles even allowed the habeas corpus act to be passed); his judges and juries could deal as they pleased with any unfortunate that the court took offence at. But the chief directions which the infringement of the liberties of the subject took in the reign of Charles II. was that of the suppression of all rights of conscience, and the punishment and spoliation of those who dared to resist. Charles was not long in forgetting his promise of freedom of conscience in his famous "Declaration of Breda." The church, with all its old assumptions of exclusive dominance, was restored, as we have seen, and the most stringent acts passed for crushing every expression of departure from the established creed. Besides all presbyterians and independents being driven out of the pulpits of the state, a series of the most tyrannical acts were passed to drive all dissenters out of every office of trust and honour, and to punish them for assembling to worship in the most private manner according to their own form of worship. There was the corporation act passed in 1661, compelling every one, before being admitted to any office in any municipal corporation, to take the sacrament according to the fashion of the established church, and to subscribe the declarations abjuring the solemn league and covenant, and against the lawfulness of taking up arms against the king on any pretence whatever. This was followed by the act of uniformity, in 1662, compelling every one to declare his assent to everything in the book of common prayer before he could be admitted to any church
