to their consciences, " even as they should enactment of the detestable and cruel penal answer before God at the day of judgment," laws against Protestants, which legalized the and prayed for their liberty. acts of bloody persecution that have stained The Lord Chancellor passed sentence Mary's name for all time, seceded bodily "that they should pay a thousand marks from Parliament, the Star Chamber punished and that they should go to prison again and them by fine, imprisonment and other inflic there remain till further order were given tions, and by loss of their parliamentary wages. for their punishment." Subsequently the sheriff made an inven Numerous were the proceedings of the tory of their property, which being reported Star Chamber against Protestants, but the to the council, Weston, Lucar and Kightlie prosecutions there were confined to offenses were adjudged to pay £2,000 apiece, and of a comparatively trivial nature, the com the rest one thousand marks each, to be mon law courts enforcing the capital laws. paid within one fortnight after. From this The following is one of the Star Chamber the four who had confessed their fault and entries in the time of James I. : — submitted thereto were exempted. "In Camera Stellata * * Five of the eight were afterwards dis Whereas William Dale, John Eden, Hugh Jones charged and set at liberty upon paying the and Richard Jackson and other refractory Puri fines. The other three sent in a petition to tans and Brownists, did deface divers crosses in the court, urging that their goods did not highways, in the night time : For this the judg amount to the fine, and so upon their paying ment of this court is upon their confession in £(yo apiece they were discharged, Dec. 21. open court, that the said William Dale" &c. When in 1555 thirty-seven members of " shall be bound in good behavior, and acknowl the House of Commons, as well Catholics edge their offense at the assizes, and every one as Protestants, after vainly opposing the of them pay 1oo marks fine to the King's use."
SIR JAMES STEPHEN'S HISTORICAL WORK. By Forrest Morgan. THE work done for humanity by the late Sir James Stephen, in giving to 250,000,000 people a just, lucid, brief, and workable code, in a place of a medley of Oriental common-law usages which left rights of person and property pretty much at the chance of the judges' personal qualities, has been fully appraised by others competent to speak; so have his E/iglish legal history and codification. But his priceless contribution to general history, the two volumes of " Nuncomar and Impey," has not been noticed in any obituary we have seen; yet it will keep his name fresh to historical scholars
forever. It was his rare fortune and ability to write a work in what seemed a well-trod den field of history which is at once the prime quarry from which every subsequent worker in that field must draw, and the convincing judicial decision which every one who pre sumes to form a different judgment must first overthrow; to settle once for all a problem which, purely personal in itself, is of the first order in general importance from the vastly wider ones it involves and to which it is the key. On the question whether War ren Hastings promoted and' Justice Impey carried out a judicial murder of the Mahara
