The law of the twenty-third of her reign, making seditious words against the queen capital, is also a very tyrannical statute; and a use no less tyrannical was sometimes made of it. The case of Udal, a Puritanical clergyman, seems singular even in those arbitrary times. This man had published a book, called a Demonstration of Discipline, in which he inveighed against the government of bishops; and though he had carefully endeavored to conceal his name, he was thrown into prison upon suspicion, and brought to a trial for this offence. It was pretended, that the bishops were part of the queen’s political body; and to speak against them, was really to attack her, and was therefore felony by the statute. This was not the only iniquity to which Udal was exposed. The judges would not allow the jury to determine any thing but the fact, whether Udal had written the book or not, without examining his intention, or the import of the words. In order to prove the fact, the crown lawyers did not produce a single witness to the court: they only read the testimony of two persons absent, one of whom said, that Udal had told him he was the author; another, that a friend of Udal’s had said so. They would not allow Udal to produce any exculpatory evidence; which, they said, was never to be permitted against the crown.[*] And they tendered him an oath, by which he was required to depose that he was not the author of the book; and his refusal to make that deposition was employed as the strongest proof of his guilt. It is almost needless to add, that notwithstanding these multiplied iniquities, a verdict of death was given by the jury against Udal; for, as the queen was extremely bent upon his prosecution, it was impossible he could escape.[**] He died in prison, before execution of the sentence.
* It was never fully established that the prisoner could
legally produce evidence against the crown, till after the
revolution. See Blackstone’s Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 352.
** State Trials, vol. i. p. 144. Strype, voL iv. p. 21.
Strype’s Life of Whitgift, p. 343.
The case of Penry was, if possible, still hardier. This man was a zealous Puritan, or rather a Brownist, a small sect, which afterwards increased, and received the name of “Independents.” He had written against the hierarchy several tracts, such as Martin Marprelate, Theses Martinianæ, and other compositions, full of low scurrility and petulant satire. After concealing himself for some years, he was seized; and as the statute against seditious words required that the criminal should be tried within a year after committing the offence, he could not be indicted for his printed books. He was therefore tried for some papers found in his pocket, as if he had thereby scattered sedition.[*] It was also imputed to him, by the lord keeper, Puckering, that in some of these papers, “he had only acknowledged her majesty’s royal power to establish laws ecclesiastical and civil; but had avoided the usual terms of making, enacting, decreeing, and ordaining laws; which imply,” says the lord keeper, “a most absolute authority.”[**] Penry for these offences was condemned and executed.
Thus we have seen, that the “most absolute” authority of the sovereign, to make use of the lord keeper’s expression was established on above twenty branches of prerogative, which are now abolished, and which were, every one of them totally incompatible with the liberty of the subject. But what insured more effectually the slavery of the people, than even these branches of prerogative, was, the established principles of the times, which attributed to the prince such an unlimited and indefeasible power, as was supposed to be the origin of all law, and could be circumscribed by none. The homilies published for the use of the clergy, and which they were enjoined to read every Sunday in all the churches, inculcate every where a blind and unlimited passive obedience to the prince, which on no account, and under no pretence, is it ever lawful for subjects in the smallest article to depart from or infringe. Much noise has been made because some court chaplains, during the succeeding reigns, were permitted to preach such doctrines; but there is a great difference between these sermons, and discourses published by authority, avowed by the prince and council, and promulgated to the whole nation.[***]
* Strype’s Life of Whitgift, book iv. chap. 11. Neal, vol.
i. p. 564.
** Strype’s Annals, vol. iv. p. 177.
*** Gifford, a clergyman, was suspended in the year 1584,
for preaching up a limited obedience to the civil
magistrate, Neal, vol. i. p. 435.
So thoroughly were these principles imbibed by the people, during the reigns of Elizabeth and her predecessors, that opposition to them was regarded as the most flagrant sedition; and was not even rewarded by that public praise and approbation, which can alone support men under such dangers and difficulties as attend the resistance of tyrannical authority.[*] It was only during the next generation that the noble principles of liberty took root, and spreading themselves under the shelter of Puritanical absurdities, became fashionable among the people.
It is worth remarking, that the advantage usually ascribed to absolute monarchy, a greater regularity of police, and a more strict execution of the laws, did not attend the former English government, though in many respects it fell under that denomination. A demonstration of this truth is contained in a judicious paper which is preserved by Strype,[**] and which was written by an eminent justice of peace of Somersetshire, in the year 1596, near the end of the queen’s reign; when the authority of that princess may be supposed to be fully corroborated by time, and her maxims of government improved by long practice.
* It is remarkable, that in all the historical plays of
Shakspeare, where the manners and characters, and even the
transactions of the several reigns, are so exactly copied,
there is scarcely any mention of civil liberty, which some
pretended historians have imagined to be the object of all
the ancient quarrels, insurrections, and civil wars. In the
elaborate panegyric of England, contained in the tragedy of
Richard II., and the detail of its advantages, not a word of
its civil constitution, as anywise different from or
superior to that of other European kingdoms; an omission
which cannot be supposed in any English author that wrote
since the restoration, at least since the revolution.
** Annals, vol. iv. p. 290
This paper contains an account of the disorders which then prevailed in the county of Somerset. The author says, that forty persons had there been executed in a year for robberies, thefts, and other felonies; thirty-five burnt in the hand, thirty-seven whipped, one hundred and eighty-three discharged: that those who were discharged were most wicked and desperate persons, who never could come to any good, because they would not work, and none would take them into service: that notwithstanding this great number of indictments, the fifth part of the felonies committed in the county were not brought to trial; the greater number escaped censure, either from the superior cunning of the felons, the remissness of the magistrates, or the foolish lenity of the people: that the rapines committed by the infinite number of wicked, wandering, idle people, were intolerable to the poor countrymen, and obliged them to keep a perpetual watch over their sheepfolds, their pastures, their woods, and their cornfields: that the other counties of England were in no better condition than Somersetshire; and many of them were even in a worse: that there were at least three or four hundred able-bodied vagabonds in every county, who lived by theft and rapine; and who sometimes met in troops to the number of sixty, and committed spoil on the inhabitants: that if all the felons of this kind were assembled, they would be able, if reduced to good subjection, to give the greatest enemy her majesty has a “strong battle:” and that the magistrates themselves were intimidated from executing the laws upon them; and there were instances of justices of peace who, after giving sentence against rogues, had interposed to stop the execution of their own sentence, on account of the danger which hung over them from the confederates of these felons.