* Rush. vol. ii. p. 257, 258, etc.
** Rush. vol. iv p 535, 542.
That these principles of government were derived from the uniform tenor of the English laws, it would be rash to affirm. The fluctuating nature of the constitution, the impatient humor of the people, and the variety of events, had, no doubt, in different ages, produced exceptions and contradictions. These observations alone may be established on both sides, that the appearances were sufficiently strong in favor of the king to apologize for his following such maxims; and that public liberty must be so precarious under this exorbitant prerogative, as to render an opposition not only excusable, but laudable in the people.[*] [4]
Some laws had been enacted, during the reign of Henry VII., against depopulation, or the converting of arable lands into pasture. By a decree of the star chamber, Sir Anthony Roper was fined four thousand pounds for an offence of that nature.[**] This severe sentence was intended to terrify others into composition; and above thirty thousand pounds were levied by that expedient.[***] Like compositions, or, in default of them, heavy fines, were required for encroachments on the king’s forests, whose bounds, by decrees deemed arbitrary, were extended much beyond what was usual.[****] The bounds of one forest, that of Rockingham, were increased from six miles to sixty.[v] The same refractory humor which made the people refuse to the king voluntary supplies, disposed them, with better reason, to murmur against these irregular methods of taxation.
Morley was fined ten thousand pounds for reviling, challenging, and striking, in the court of Whitehall, Sir George Theobald, one of the king’s servants.[v*] This fine was thought exorbitant; but whether it was compounded, as was usual in fines imposed by the star chamber, we are not informed.
* See note D, at the end of the volume.
** Rush. vol. ii. p. 270; vol. iii. App. p. 106.
*** Rush. vol. iii. p. 333. Franklyn, p. 478.
**** May, p. 16.
v Strafford’s Letters and Despatches, vol. ii. p. 117.
v* Rush. vol. ii. p. 270.
Allison had reported, that the archbishop of York had incurred the king’s displeasure, by asking a limited toleration for the Catholics, and an allowance to build some churches for the exercise of their religion. For this slander against the archbishop, he was condemned in the star chamber to be fined one thousand pounds, to be committed to prison, to be bound to his good behavior during life, to be whipped, and to be set on the pillory at Westminster, and in three other towns in England. Robins, who had been an accomplice in the guilt, was condemned by a sentence equally severe.[*] Such events are rather to be considered as rare and detached incidents, collected by the severe scrutiny of historians, than as proofs of the prevailing genius of the king’s administration which seems to have been more gentle and equitable than, that of most of his predecessors: there were, on the whole, only five or six such instances of rigor during the course of fifteen years, which elapsed before the meeting of the long parliament. And it is also certain, that scandal against the great, though seldom prosecuted at present, is, however, in the eye of the law, a great crime, and subjects the offender to very heavy penalties.
There are other instances of the high respect paid to the nobility and to the great in that age, when the powers of monarchy, though disputed, still maintained themselves in their pristine vigor. Clarendon[**] tells us a pleasant incident to this purpose: a waterman, belonging to a man of quality, having a squabble with a citizen about his fare, showed his badge, the crest of his master, which happened to be a swan; and thence insisted on better treatment from the citizen. But the other replied carelessly, that he did not trouble his head about that goose. For this offence, he was summoned before the marshal’s court; was fined, as having opprobriously defamed the nobleman’s crest, by calling the swan a goose; and was in effect reduced to beggary.
Sir Richard Granville had thought himself ill used by the earl of Suffolk in a lawsuit; and he was accused before the star chamber of having said of that nobleman, that he was a base lord. The evidence against him was somewhat lame; yet for this slight offence, insufficiently proved, he was condemned to pay a fine of eight thousand pounds; one half to the earl, the other to the king.[***]
* Bush. vol. u. p, 269.
** Life of Clarendon, vol. i. p. 72.
*** Lord Lansdown, p. 514.
Sir George Markham, following a chase where Lord Darcy’s huntsman was exercising his hounds, kept closer to the dogs than was thought proper by the huntsman, who, besides other rudeness, gave him foul language, which Sir George returned with a stroke of his whip. The fellow threatened to complain to his master: the knight replied, “If his master should justify such insolence, he would serve him in the same manner;” or words to that effect. Sir George was summoned before the Star chamber, and fined ten thousand pounds: “So fine a thing was it in those days to be a lord!”—a natural reflection of Lord Lansdown’s in relating this incident.[*] The people, in vindicating their liberties from the authority of the crown, threw off also the yoke of the nobility. It is proper to remark that this last incident happened early in the reign of James. The present practice of the star chamber was far from being an innovation; though the present dispositions of the people made them repine more at this servitude.