public
opinion it had been gagged by a system of licenses. The regulations
framed under Henry the Eighth subjected the press to the control of the
Star Chamber, and the Martin Marprelate libels brought about a yet more
stringent control under Elizabeth. Even the Long Parliament laid a
heavy hand on the press, and the great remonstrance of Milton in his
"Areopagitica" fell dead on the ears of his Puritan associates. But the
statute for the regulation of printing which was passed immediately
after the Restoration expired finally in 1679 and the temper of the
present Parliament at once put an end to any attempt at re-establishing
the censorship. To the new freedom of the press the Habeas Corpus Act
added new security for the personal freedom of every Englishman. Against
arbitrary imprisonment provision had been made in the earliest ages by a
famous clause in the Great Charter. No free man could be held in prison
save on charge or conviction of crime or for debt; and every prisoner on
a criminal charge could demand as a right from the court of King's Bench
the issue of a writ of "habeas corpus," which bound his gaoler to
produce both the prisoner and the warrant on which he was imprisoned
that the court might judge whether he was imprisoned according to law.
In cases, however, of imprisonment on a warrant of the royal Council it
had been sometimes held by judges that the writ could not be issued, and
under Clarendon's administration instances had in this way occurred of
imprisonment without legal remedy. But his fall was quickly followed by
the introduction of a bill to secure this right of the subject, and
after a long struggle the Act which is known as the Habeas Corpus Act
passed finally in the Parliament of 1679. By this great statute the old
practice of the law was freed from all difficulties and exceptions.
Every prisoner committed for any crime save treason or felony was
declared entitled to his writ even in the vacations of the courts, and
heavy penalties were enforced on judges or gaolers who refused him this
right. Every person committed for felony or treason was entitled to be
released on bail unless indicted at the next session of gaol-delivery
after his commitment, and to be discharged if not indicted at the
sessions which followed. It was forbidden under the heaviest penalties
to evade this operation of the writ as it had been evaded under
Clarendon by sending a prisoner to any places or fortresses beyond the
s