him to be a felon, upon your honour and worship. So help you God and all saints.[1]"
In about half a century, however, even these provisions were found insufficient. The act of Henry the seventh was evaded, and the legislature once more obliged to interpose. The act of 1 and 2 of Philip and Mary takes away entirely from the justices all power of bailing for offences declared not bailable by the statute of Westminster.
The illegal imprisonment of several persons,, who had refused to contribute to a loan exacted by Charles the first, and the delay of the Habeas Corpus, and subsequent refusal to bail them, constituted one of the first and most important grievances of that reign. Yet when the house of commons, which met in the year 1628, resolved upon measures of the most firm and strenuous resistance to the power of imprisonment, assumed by the King or privy council, and to the refusal to bail the party on the return of the Habeas Corpus, they did expressly, in all their resolutions, make an exception of commitments, where the cause
- ↑ Parliamentary History, 2. 419.
