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In regard to the poor minister whose case had moved him to write, he said 'his Grace might therefore deal with his friend Master Brayne as he thought fit; but when by examining him it was meant only to sift him with twentyfour Articles, he had cause to pity the poor man.'

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Wise and strong men, lovers of their country, saw clearly that the constitution was being undermined. The long struggle for human liberty had not been without its guerdon. But now, after many victories, after having freed itself from the servitude of Rome, the chiefest of all the victories of freedom, another succession of priests, as much a caste as the old and not a whit less overbearing, was turning the glory of the English race into shame. Attorney Morrice wrote the Prelates privately of their errour and abuse,' not touching, as he says, any living person and treating the matter generally, and only communicating his fears and thoughts besides to an honourable Counsellor of estate' and a (lay) ecclesiastical commissioner. Of course no heed was taken of his private admonition. He therefore pointed out the abuse in a speech which he delivered from his place in Parliament. This he afterwards embodied in a paper still in existence.2 He naturally reflects upon the grotesque circumstance that the men that offer these indignities (who would thinke it!) are the persons comonlie called spirituall.' He then divides his remarks under three heads. The wrongs are chiefly perpetrated (a) ' by an ungodlye and intollerable inquisition'; (b) 'by a lawlesse subscription'; and (c) by a binding absolution.' He first describes the inquisition; the 'seacret, and for the most part, malitious enformers'; citation upon 'bare suspition conceyved of your owne Phantasies'; trial without lawfull presentment,' with the obnoxious oath and interrogatories. If the accused-though that name is not an accurate description-through weakness submit to the oath, then he is sure to be tricked into supplying some information for 1 Neal, i. 339, 340. Burleigh is the only man who bearded Whitgift and did not suffer for it.

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2 A Remembrance of certaine matters concerninge the Clergye and theire Jurisdiction, Baker MSS. (Cam. Univ. Lib.), Mm. i. 51.

his own condemnation. If he refuse, 'then, as for a heynous contempt against God and hir Majtie he is comytted to hard and miserable Imprisonment, there to remayne duringe pleasure, without Bayle or Mayneprise.' The scandalous invasion of natural human rights thus committed is shown. Nothing but contempt is being cast upon the great instruments and institutions of law. The Great Charter says that no Freeman shall be punished or fined except by the 'lawe of the Lande'; and forbids the accused to be put on oath. There is the great statute 16 Edward III. which provides 'that no man be putt to answere, without presentment before Justices, matter of Record, due processour, with originall, after the antient Lawe of the Land.' The ecclesiastical judges had stigmatised these as 'antiquate and worne out of use'; he uses, he remarks, their termes.'

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Morrice then points out a characteristic piece of prelatical sharp-practice. In their demand for a 'lawlesse subscription,' the Bishops begin with a fair show; they present the Article touching the Royal Supremacy, which none refuses. But presently they proceed to highly disputable matters' of their own devising; and because subscription is denied to these, the examinee is made guilty of all, as though they had opposed a genuine legal enactment and were disloyal. To Morrice, as a constitutional lawyer, this whole proceeding was a violation of the prerogative of the Crown. The binding absolution,' his third head, is the injustice of asking men to be absolved by binding themselves, beyond all reason or right, to obey ecclesiastical laws and injunctions which they know not, and if they were knowne, yet impossible to be performed.' He notes in regard to the oath that, in answer to a request that they should not urge it upon ministers of known reputation the Bishops' response was bytter, sharpe, and offensive to hir Maiesties Courts of Justice-they could not, they declared, exercise their jurisdiction without dealinge ex officio.' They had abandoned all justification for their proceedings except the Act 1 Eliz., with the Commission it authorised. Morrice, however, points out that that Act was only a restoring Act, and

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could only restore such jurisdictions and privileges as were previously lawfully exercised. Comparing these lawless clerical pirates with the Queen, he finely says, 'Behold with us the sovereigne Aucthoritie of one, an absolute Prince, Greate in Maiestie, rulinge and reigninge; yet guyded and directed by Principles and Precepts of Reason, which wee terme the Lawe.' 1

1 Upon completion of his speech Morrice presented two Bills to the House, one against 'unlawfull oathes, injunctions, and subscriptions,' and the other against 'unlawfull imprisonment and restraynt of Libertie'; in the preambles of which, respectively, he embodied, in technical form, the legal grounds of his procedure. The discussion which followed was highly interesting. Dalton, a lawyer, made it an opportunity of inveighing against the Puritans and the Church at Middleburgh (Zeeland); Wooley, a privy councillor, pretended that the subject was forbidden; Finch of Gray's Inn denounced the Inquisition; Sir Francis Knollys denied that Morrice opposed ecclesiastical jurisdiction; he opposed its abuse; certainly if ecclesiastical laws contravened the Laws of the Realm, then ecclesiastical laws must 'stoope and submytt them selfes.' Sir Robert Cecil and the Speaker succeeded in getting the Bills postponed till the next day. That, says Morrice, was the last he heard of them. Whitgift was no doubt to the fore, poisoning the mind of the Queen (see an example of his practice, Strype, Whitg. i. 391), and so next day Morrice had to appear before the Privy Council. Here began his troubles,-they ended only with his death. For his interference in ecclesiastical affairs he was to be imprisoned-Burleigh securing that it should be in a counsellor's house. The Lord Keeper had waxed warm on the lawfulness of the oath; but Burleigh said Morrice's Bills were wrong 'onlie in forme—he should have addressed himself directly to her Majesty. Morrice, in reply, claimed that he had only touched upon 'matters of estate.' From his durance in Sir John Fortescue's house, where he was hospitably treated in the ill-health from which he suffered, he addressed several letters to Burleigh and others. In one of them he warns the authorities to consider well the situation, lest, 'as heretofore we praied, From the tyranny of the Bishop] of Rome, good Lord deliver us, we bee compelled to pray, From the Tyranny of the Clergy of England, good Lord deliver us.' Much public interest was shown in his case; his patriotic spirit and his physical weakness combined to awaken the sympathies of the people. After various delays and interviews, he got his release, and found his way home to Westminster once more. But it could not be supposed that so bold and powerful a critic of the Prelates, so courageous a counsel on behalf of their victims, could be left at large to continue his mischief. He was first of all deprived of his place in the Duchy Court, and then his teeth were drawn by depriving him from practising as a common lawyer. But even then his great learning and wise counsel were at the command of persecuted reformers, such as Giles Wigginton and others. His vindictive priestly enemy never rested till he had him shut up in Tutbury Castle-a few miles from Burton-on-Trentsometime the prison of Mary Stewart; a 'fortress rather than a dwellinghouse, desolate and uncomfortable,' Bp. Creighton describes it (Eliz. p. 213). There James Morrice remained till his death-a martyr to the cause of public justice and liberty.-Baker MSS. (Camb. Univ. Lib.), Mm. i. 51.

7. Later Phases of the Court under Whitgift, Bancroft, and Laud.-There is a significant record of Whitgift sitting alone in the Court of High Commission, for the establishment of which he was chiefly responsible. Men shrank from the obloquy which attached to its proceedings, tyrannical in method and pitiless in spirit as they were. But the now aged persecutor, seventy years of age and more, unrepenting of all his cruelties, his lawless proceedings, his betrayal of the liberties of the people, sits in his abhorred tribunal, querulously complaining that privy councillors and bishops were avoiding its precincts, and that the only officials on duty are deans and doctors, and such small fry, 'whose attendance he might with some authority command and expect.'' Whitgift's successor Bancroft, under King James, found the High Commission an institution very much to his mind in his strenuous efforts to free the Established Church from the dominance of the law, and to create an ecclesiastical tribunal having an entirely independent jurisdiction. Caring less than nothing for the constitutional and inherited liberties of the people, Bancroft, when successfully opposed by Chief Justice Coke, desperately appealed to the autocratic instincts of King James so as to gain his end. The King was to be a sort of oriental amir, sitting in the gate, and himself administering, not indeed law, but Jacobean justice. The

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1 The King somewhat objected to the number of the Commissioners, thinking them too many. Whitgift replied that the larger number was necessary for otherwise he must be forc'd, as oft-times now it fell out, to sit alone, etc.' He also complained that some suspected persons were too eminent to be reached in any other way, and averred that Commissions were (at that particular time we assume, certainly not in the earlier days of his rule) granted against his will, and without his knowledge. One of the lay lords of the Conference repeated the original objections to the Commission and the oath, offered by Burleigh and Morrice, alleging the procedure to be illegal and 'like unto the Spanish Inquisition.' The Archbishop then made the most astounding statement of all. 'In the manner of proceeding and examining,' he said, 'his Lordship was deceived: For if any Article did touch the Party any way, either for Life, Liberty, or Scandal, he might refuse to Answer, neither was he urg'd thereunto.' Although this is recorded by a dignitary entirely favourable to Whitgift, it is difficult to believe that he ever made such a statement. See The Sum and Substance of the Conference, by William Barlow, D.D., Dean of Chester. Reprinted in The Phoenix, i. 172, 173.

judges were only his delegates, Bancroft urged; and agents could not perform acts which their principal was incompetent to perform; and James thought so too. The Chief Justice made short work of this egregious claim; upon which the royal Solomon told him that his sentiments were treasonable, and that he spoke like a fool. The judges, however, agreed with the eminent Chief Justice, and no doubt, if legal authority could have operated, the Court of High Commission would not have been allowed to continue its evil existence. It was reserved to another Archbishop of the Established Church to fill up the cup of its iniquities. Under William Laud the policy of Whitgift and Bancroft was carried to its extremity, until the names of the High Commission and of its companion and co-operating court, the Star Chamber, became a terror in the land. For writing Sion's Plea against Prelacy Alexander Leighton, father of the Archbishop of that name, was apprehended on a warrant from the High Commission; he was seized coming out of church, dragged to Laud's house, thence, without form of trial, to Newgate. There he lay in irons in a foul dog-hole, snow coming through the open roof, without bedding, without fire, the place infested with vermin, for fifteen weeks. His wife was used with incredible barbarity, and a pistol was presented to the breast of a child of five, in order to compel him to show where his father's books were hidden. The little fellow never recovered from his terror. Through his evil usage Leighton's hair and skin came off. In this condition he was tried before the Star Chamber, was condemned to be degraded from his ministry; to have his ears cut; his nose slit; to be branded in the face; to stand in the pillory; to be whipped at a post; to pay ten thousand pounds [it might as well have been ten millions]; and to suffer perpetual imprisonment. The verdict being pronounced, the grateful Archbishop took off his hat, and holding up his hands, 'gave thanks to God, who had given him the victory over his enemies.' The sentence was actually carried out, and that by halves. The first half was executed at Westminster,

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