[22] The name is sometimes spelt Brabaçon, Brabançon, Brabason, and Brabanson.
[23] Hume, who designates them “desperate ruffians,” says “troops of them were sometimes enlisted in the service of one prince or baron, sometimes in that of another; they often acted in an independent manner, and under leaders of their own. The greatest monarchs were not ashamed, on occasion, to have recourse to their assistance; and as their habits of war and depredation had given them experience, hardiness, and courage, they generally composed the most formidable part of those armies which decided the political quarrels of princes.”—Vol. i. 438. In America we have no mercenary soldiers, but plenty of mercenary politicians, almost as much to be dreaded.—Ed.
[24] They were removed because, during the king’s absence on the continent, they had been guilty of taking bribes, and other misdemeanors. Of De Wayland, one of their number, and the first chief justice of the Common Pleas, Lord Campbell gives the following account: When arrested, on the king’s return from Aquitaine, conscious of his guilt, he contrived to escape from custody, and, disguising himself in the habit of a monk, he was admitted among friars-minors in a convent at Bury St. Edmund’s. However, being considered a heinous offender, sharp pursuit was made after him, and he was discovered wearing a cowl and a serge jerkin. According to the law of sanctuary, then prevailing, he was allowed to remain forty days unmolested. At the end of that time the convent was surrounded by a military force, and the entry of provisions into it was prohibited. Still it would have been deemed sacrilegious to take him from his asylum by violence; but the lord chief justice preferred surrendering himself to perishing from want. He was immediately conducted to the Tower of London. Rather than stand a trial, he petitioned for leave to abjure the realm; this favor was granted to him on condition that he should be attainted, and forfeit all his lands and chattels to the crown. Having walked barefoot and bareheaded, with a crucifix in his hand, to the sea side at Dover, he was put on board a ship and departed to foreign parts. He is said to have died in exile, and he left a name often quoted as a reproach to the bench till he was superseded by Jeffreys and Scroggs.
[25] That is, in the ordinary discharge of his duties. His attempt to take away the liberties of the Scotch we shall presently see.—Ed.
[26] Just like our northern candidates for the presidency, and the dough-face politicians who contrive to get chosen to Congress by northern constituencies, whose rights they then barter away and betray.—Ed.
[27] This is the very ground upon which it is attempted, now, to justify the repeal of the Missouri prohibition of slavery, while Brabacon’s defence of English judges in Scotland is a counterpart to the justification by our federal judges of the authority given to slave-catching commissioners.—Ed.
[28] May the pending attempts of the Southern States, countenanced and supported by the federal judges, to establish a “superiority” and “direct dominion” over the north, be met and repelled with similar spirit and success!—Ed.
[29] He had been murdered by a body of insurgent peasants headed by Jack Straw, one of the leaders in Wat Tyler’s insurrection.—Ed.
[30] Some of our federal judges would no doubt like very much to see this rule established among us.—Ed.
[31] The persistence of Richard II. in the same arbitrary principles of which the advocacy cost Tresilian his life, caused his deposition a few years afterwards, as to which, Lord Campbell observes,—