pbell, now Chief Justice of the King's Bench, says of them and
their author. I read it to you long ago. "I ought to mention that
among his other vanities he had the ambition to be an author; and he
compiled a folio volume of decisions in criminal laws, _which are of
no value whatever except to make us laugh at some of the silly
egotisms with which they abound_."[198] Twysden, who showed him the
Report of the charge, is of little value, and of no authority. I
mentioned his character before.

[Footnote 198: 2 Campbell's Justices, 406.]

Justice Jones, who made the charge, would hardly be an authority in
the English courts in a nice question of construction. He allowed the
king to levy ship-money, as I have shown before,[199] and dared not
perform the duties of his office and so protect the Liberty of the
Subject when the king smote thereat. He was brought before the House
of Commons to answer for his conduct, in 1628. "His memory," says
Echard, "suffers upon the account of his open judgment for the
ship-money, the unhappy consequence of which he did not live to
see."[200]

[Footnote 199: Above, p. 23.]

[Footnote 200: Parl. Hist. 290; 3 St. Tr. 844, 1181, 162; 2 Echard,
186.]

Judge Kelyng, the great authority in this case, was notorious for
violating alike Justice and the law. Out of a riot committed by some
apprentices he constructed the crime of High Treason, and sentenced
thirteen men to death. He fined and imprisoned jurors because they
refused to return the wicked, illegal verdict he demanded. With
language too obscene to utter in this century, he mocked at the Great
Charter of English Liberty. But at last the scandal was too great even
for the reign of Charles II., and in 1667 the "Grand Committee of
Justice" in the House of Commons, after examining witnesses and
hearing him on his own behalf, reported:--

1. "That the proceedings of the Lord Chief Justice in the
cases referred to us are innovations in the trial of men for
their lives and liberties, and that he hath used an
arbitrary and illegal power which is of dangerous
consequence to the lives and liberties of the people of
England."

2. "That in place of Judicature, the Lord Chief Justice hath
undervalued, vilified, and condemned MAGNA CHARTA, the great
preserver of our lives, freedom, and property."

3. "That the Lord Chief Justice be brought to trial, in
order to condign punishment, in such m