ng emptiness of the
exchequer, this scheme of enormous penalties, became more dangerous and
subversive of justice, though not more odious, than corporal punishment.

A gentleman of the name of Allington was fined twelve thousand pounds
for marrying his niece. One, who had sent a challenge to the Earl of
Northumberland, was fined five thousand pounds; another for saying the
Earl of Suffolk was a base lord, four thousand pounds to him, and a like
sum to the King. Sir David Forbes, for opprobrious words against Lord
Wentworth, incurred five thousand pounds to the King and three thousand
pounds to the party. On some soap-boilers, who had not complied with the
requisitions of the newly incorporated company, mulcts were imposed of
one thousand five hundred pounds and one thousand pounds. One man was
fined and set in the pillory for engrossing corn, though he only kept
what grew on his own land, asking more in a season of dearth than the
overseers of the poor thought proper to give. Some arbitrary regulations
with respect to prices may be excused by a well-intentioned though
mistaken policy. The charges of inns and taverns were fixed by the
judges; but even in those a corrupt motive was sometimes blended. The
company of vintners, or victuallers, having refused to pay a demand of
the lord-treasurer, one penny a quart for all wine drunk in their
houses, the Star-chamber, without information filed or defence made,
interdicted them from selling or dressing victuals till they submitted
to pay forty shillings for each tun of wine to the King.

It is evident that the strong interest of the court in these fines must
not only have had a tendency to aggravate the punishment, but to induce
sentences of condemnation on inadequate proof. From all that remains of
proceedings in the Star-chamber, they seem to have been very frequently
as iniquitous as they were severe. In many celebrated instances, the
accused party suffered less on the score of any imputed offence than for
having provoked the malice of a powerful adversary, or for notorious
dissatisfaction with the existing government. Thus Williams, Bishop of
Lincoln, once lord-keeper the favorite of King James, the possessor for
a season of the power that was turned against him, experienced the
rancorous and ungrateful malignity of Laud, who, having been brought
forward by Williams into the favor of the court, not only supplanted by
his intrigues, and incensed the King's mind against his