Magna Carta, the magnificent conception of a great English ecclesiastic of the thirteenth century, would perhaps be found even to-day, if a time of stress came upon us, to be still a counsel of perfection. If that is so, the blame must rest upon William III. and his advisers. Strange that men to whom power was given in order that they might protect us from arbitrary government should have exceeded those they displaced in the exercise of arbitrary power! Cromwell derided Magna Carta in terms not to be reproduced here.[202] The accession of William was almost immediately followed by the suspension of habeas corpus, resting upon the great Charter.
Macaulay tells us that Charles II. “would gladly have refused his assent to that measure,” the habeas corpus Act. We will not dispute it; but Charles did not ask for the suspension of habeas corpus when the Rye House Plot broke out. Macaulay tells us that James II. hated the Act. This, again, we will not dispute. But he did not ask for its suspension when Monmouth invaded England. William did not wait for the Assassination Plot to ask Parliament to suspend the Act. Before he had been on the throne a month he established an evil precedent which has ever since been followed; no minister has since ever hesitated to ask Parliament to suspend habeas corpus, and no Parliament has ever refused the request when made. Suspended four times in the reign of William and Mary and William, once in the reign of Anne, thrice in the reign of George I., four times in the reign of George II., and twenty times in the reign of George III. (Ireland is left out of account), habeas corpus was reduced to the point at which it afforded exactly the amount of protection that a man would receive from a waterproof coat, worn in sunshine, and carefully left at home when rain falls.[203]
1696. December 31. Yesterday 14 men were executed at Tyburn, 10 of them for clipping and coining, the other 4 for robbery (Luttrell, iv. 162).
1697. July 20. The 16th past, 14 malefactors were executed at Tyburn; 3 men and 1 woman for coining, 2 men for counterfeiting stamp’t paper, a woman for murthering her bastard child; and 7 more for robbery and burglary; and the French woman, who murdered Mrs. Pullein, was hanged at the end of Suffolk Street, where the fact was committed (Luttrell, iv. 254).
1697. November 4. Yesterday 6 persons were executed at Tyburn; two for coining, one for robbing on the high way, and 3 for counterfeiting stampt paper, of which Mr. Salisbury the minister was one; he had the favour to goe to Tyburn in a mourning coach, and his body was brought back in a herse.
Salisbury was a non-juring parson of Sussex; the evidence against him showed that he did not commit the forgery for want, “as having a good estate and a good living, but only to prejudice king William’s Government” (Luttrell, iv. 292, 302).
A few days later Luttrell records the committal of another parson for the same offence.
1698. December 22. Yesterday fourteen men and one woman were executed at Tyburn; two of the men were drawn in a sledge, and were for coining; one man was carried in a coach, for robbing on the high way; and the rest in carts, for burglary and robbery on the high way; and one for murther (L., iv. 464).
Including these, Luttrell records the execution at Tyburn this year of 62 persons.