sing from this state of the law had been much
felt. The explanation may perhaps be that, till the last year of his
reign, the force which he maintained in England consisted chiefly of
household troops, whose pay was so high that dismission from the service
would have been felt by most of them as a great calamity. The stipend
of a private in the Life Guards was a provision for the younger son of a
gentleman. Even the Foot Guards were paid about as high as manufacturers
in a prosperous season, and were therefore in a situation which the
great body of the labouring population might regard with envy. The
return of the garrison of Tangier and the raising of the new regiments
had made a great change. There were now in England many thousands of
soldiers, each of whom received only eightpence a day. The dread of
dismission was not sufficient to keep them to their duty: and corporal
punishment their officers could not legally inflict. James had therefore
one plain choice before him, to let his army dissolve itself, or to
induce the judges to pronounce that the law was what every barrister in
the Temple knew that it was not.

It was peculiarly important to secure the cooperation of two courts;
the court of King's Bench, which was the first criminal tribunal in the
realm, and the court of gaol delivery which sate at the Old Bailey, and
which had jurisdiction over offences committed in the capital. In both
these courts there were great difficulties. Herbert, Chief Justice of
the King's Bench, servile as he had hitherto been, would go no further.
Resistance still more sturdy was to be expected from Sir John Holt, who,
as Recorder of the City of London, occupied the bench at the Old Bailey.
Holt was an eminently learned and clear headed lawyer: he was an
upright and courageous man; and, though he had never been factious,
his political opinions had a tinge of Whiggism. All obstacles,
however, disappeared before the royal will. Holt was turned out of the
recordership. Herbert and another Judge were removed from the King's
Bench; and the vacant places were filled by persons in whom the
government could confide. It was indeed necessary to go very low down
in the legal profession before men could be found willing to render such
services as were now required. The new Chief justice, Sir Robert Wright,
was ignorant to a proverb; yet ignorance was not his worst fault. His
vices had ruined him. He had resorted to infamous ways of raising money,