234 Enormous Money Penalties well worthy of a great court of justice. But this work, both good and bad, meant the rapid increase of social prohibitions and the multiplication of crimes and criminals. When we examine the numerous cases tried before this tribunal,' we find that the bulk of them were misdemeanors—many of them political-such as libels, conspiracies, breaches of the public peace and assaults with violence. The money penalties inflicted were enormous. Thus, Allington was fined £12,000 for marrying his niece; Sir David Fowlis, for opprobrious words against Lord Wentworth, £5000 to the king and £3000 to the party libeled. Sending a challenge to the Earl of Northumberland was punished by a fine of £5000. For saying the Earl of Suffolk was a base lord, £4000 were awarded to him and £4000 to the king. Bishop Williams' sentence for concealment of a libelous letter was £5000 to the king, £3000 to the archbishop, and imprisonment during pleasure.3 Soap-boilers, for not complying with the king's illegal monopoly, were fined £1500, and again £1000. Besides crushing fines and life-long imprisonment, the punishments for more humble criminals were bloody whippings, pillory, slitting of the nose, cutting off the ears, branding of the cheek or forehead-all inflicted with extreme cruelty. The revival of the ancient forest laws and other statutes long disused, was simply for the purpose of exacting money to supply the urgent needs of the king. Monstrous fines were imposed on trespassers. Lord Salisbury was fined £20,000, Lord Westmorland, £19,000, and Sir Christopher Hatton, £12,000. The Earl of Southampton was nearly ruined by forest boundary decisions. For certain alleged breaches of 1 See Rushworth and State Trials. State Trials, iii, 586. 3 Ibid., iii, 770. See also cases of Leighton, Lilburn, Prynne, Burton, Bastwick, and a multitude of others recorded in Rushworth, ii, 57, 469, 471, and State Trials. For the Council of the North, see prosecutions of Sir David Fowlis, Bellasis and Maleverer. (Rushworth.) their charter rights, the Star Chamber imposed a fine of £70,000 on the city of London, and the money was paid.' History reveals the drawing of an even larger proportion of criminal cases into these royal courts of extraordinary jurisdiction, with the evident intention of magnifying the king's power (by giving royal proclamations the force of laws, etc.), and punishing his political and religious opponents as criminals, while at the same time securing a considerable revenue by fines and forfeitures, and habituating the nation to a criminal jurisdiction, less restrained and more closely dependent upon the will of the king. The Council of the North and the Council of Wales (branches of the Star Chamber) are said to have "deprived one-third of England of the privileges of the common law," and the wide sweep of the criminal jurisdiction exercised by the Star Chamber itself has just been evidenced.3 Laud "absolutely governed the Church through the High Commission Court," but thought the punishments imposed on the refractory, both clericals and laity, inadequate. The ordinary courts of common law must have been completely overawed and half paralyzed during the first half of the seventeenth century.5 Juries returning verdicts disagreeable to the government were liable to a summons before the Star Chamber, which reprimanded, fined, or imprisoned them, thus creating a new class of criminals. Records of the courts of Quarter Sessions in Devonshire and Bucks counties show that the criminal cases left for their decision were comparatively few and generally unimportant. Ecclesiastical Offences. The Court of High Commission 2 Ibid., ii, 34. 1 Hallam, ii, 27. Ibid., ii, 99. ▲ Ibid., ii, 46. See the "emphatically threatening words" of Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, to some justices of the peace, "that the king's little finger should be heavier than the loins of the law." Rushworth, viii, 149, 154. 6 Hamilton, History of Quarter Sessions. 236 High Commission Court was created by an act of Queen Elizabeth to try religious offences" according to the known boundaries of ecclesiastical jurisdiction;" but in the seventeenth century it assumed the power to imprison and to fine the laity, and became more and more tyrannical in its illegal practices. Many Puritan clergymen were deprived for non-conformity under James I. and Archbishop Bancroft, the number being variously estimated at from three hundred to forty-nine.3 In the very beginning of this reign, persecutions of the Papists were renewed with rigor. I Jas. I., c. 4, 1603-4, decreed new penalties against recusants, and forbade them to educate their children according to their religious faith. The administration of the laws was made exceedingly severe. The jails were filled, and a few men were put to death.* "Recusants in the middle classes of life were ground to the dust by repeated forfeitures." In Hereford county alone "four hundred and nine families suddenly found themselves reduced to a state of beggary."5 Under Archbishop Laud, prosecutions for non-conformity were renewed with great severity. Those who objected to "his novel ceremonies," or dared to preach on the Calvinistic side, were "harassed by the High Commission Court as if they had been actual schismatics." Thirty of the "precise" or puritanical clergy were excommunicated and deprived in the single diocese of Norwich for refusing to read in their churches a proclamation called the "Book of Sports." This was enforced as a test of Puritanism throughout all England, and several hundred Englishmen about this time exiled themselves to the coast of Massachusetts to be free from persecution and serve God in a savage land. On the other hand, Charles I. favored his Roman Catholic subjects, "winked at the domestic exercise of the Catholic religion," and did not enforce the fines and imprisonments for recusancy which the laws demanded. Only one Romish priest was executed before 1640, and the number of Romanists pardoned during the first sixteen years of Charles' reign is said to have been 11,970 in but twentynine counties. The large and increasing number of converts to the Romish faith-some of them men and women high in royal favor-excited great alarm throughout the nation. Clarendon tells us that "they (the Papists) were looked upon as good subjects at court, and as good neighbours in the country; all the restraints and reproaches of former times being forgotten." Evidently Romanism was not a crime in this reign.' When the Puritans came into power, Parliament subscribed the covenant, and a severe persecution of the Anglican Episcopalians followed. The private estates of all clergy who had helped King Charles were confiscated by an ordinance of April 1, 1643. But when the Covenant was imposed as a test of conformity to Presbyterianism and the established government, about 1600 beneficed ministers, probably more than one-fifth of all in the kingdom, were ejected from their churches for refusing to sign it. The Puritans made a large variety of sports criminal: such as wrestling, shooting, bowling, ringing of bells for pleasure, masks, wakes, church-ale, games, dancing or other pastime. All persons were forbidden to be present at such on the Lord's day, under heavy penalties." Cromwell seems to have desired the establishment of religious liberty, but the English nation was not yet ready for 1 Clarendon, i, 116 and 142 226; Hallam, ii, 58 and 66–7. for Sec'y Windebank releasing papists; Neal, ii, There were from 250 to 360 Jesuit priests in England, 180 other regulars, and five or six hundred secular priests. Hallam, ii, 61. 2 Traill, iv, 167. 238 Religious Persecution so radical a change, and after the Restoration, Parliament reached a height of religious intolerance never seen before nor since in England; as the Corporation Act of 1661, the Act of Uniformity, 1662, the Conventicle Act, 1664, and the Five-Mile Act, 1665, abundantly prove. The Act of Uniformity, 13 and 14 Car. II., c. iv, § 3, decreed that every beneficed minister, fellow of a college and even schoolmaster must unfeignedly agree to all the contents of the book of common prayer. About 2000 Presbyterian clergymen were deprived for non-compliance with this act, on St. Bartholemew's day, in the year 1662. The act for suppressing seditious conventicles punished attendance at such by three months imprisonment for the first offence, six months for the second, and seven years transportation for the third," on conviction before a single justice of the peace." The gaols were soon filled with both ministers and laymen. Statute 17 Car. II., c. 2, known as the Five Mile Act, was horribly severe. By far the greater number of non-conformist clergy refused to take the subscribed oath, and were driven from their homes into the wilderness.3 Twelve years after this date, in 1677, capital punishment for heretics was abolished by law. Apparently the English people were beginning to tire of religious persecution. But regarding the original social necessity or great usefulness of punishing sins and non-conformity as crimes, Stephen writes: "If scepticism had been accepted as a basis of legislation, say at and after the barbarian conquests, it is difficult to see how western Europe could ever have ceased to be barbarous. Or, if the same view had prevailed in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, it is difficult to see how the oppressions of the clergy could ever have been removed." 1 Turning from religious offences back to political and other 'Hallam, ii, 347. Neal, iv, 326 and 335; Baxter, Life, part 2. p. 384. * Stephen, ii. |