[1] "It hath so happened," he says, "by the disobedient and seditious carriage of those said ill-affected persons of the House of Commons, that we and our regal authority and commandment have been so highly contemned as our kingly office cannot bear, nor any former age can parallel." Rymer, xix. 30.
[3] Whitelock's _Memorials_, p. 14. Whitelock's father was one of the judges of the king's bench; his son takes pains to exculpate him from the charge of too much compliance, and succeeded so well with the long parliament that when they voted Chief-Justice Hyde and Justice Jones guilty of delay in not bailing these gentlemen, they voted also that Croke and Whitelock were not guilty of it. The proceedings, as we now read them, hardly warrant this favourable distinction. _Parl. Hist._ ii. 869, 876.
[4] Strode's act is printed in Hatsell's _Precedents_, vol. i. p. 80, and in several other books, as well as in the great edition of _Statutes of the Realm_. It is worded, like many of our ancient laws, so confusedly, as to make its application uncertain; but it rather appears to me not to have been intended as a public act.
[5] _State Trials_, vol. iii. from Rushworth.
[8] Rushworth; _State Trials_, iii. 373; Whitelock, p. 12. Chambers applied several times for redress to the long parliament on account of this and subsequent injuries, but seems to have been cruelly neglected, while they were voting large sums to those who had suffered much less, and died in poverty.
[9] I have remarked in former passages that the rack was much employed, especially against Roman catholics, under Elizabeth. Those accused of the gunpowder conspiracy were also severely tortured; and others in the reign of James. Coke, in the Countess of Shrewsbury's case, 1612 (_State Trials_, ii. 773), mentions it as a privilege of the nobility, that "their bodies are not subject to torture in causâ criminis læsæ majestatis." Yet, in his third Institute, p. 35, he says, the rack in the Tower was brought in by the Duke of Exeter, under Henry VI., and is, therefore, familiarly called the Duke of Exeter's daughter; and after quoting Fortescue to prove the practice illegal, concludes--"There is no law to warrant tortures in this land, nor can they be justified by any prescription, being so lately brought in." Bacon observes, in a tract written in 1603: "In the highest cases of treason, torture is used for discovery, and not for evidence."--i. 393. See also Miss Aikin's _Memoirs of James I._ ii. 158.
