which goes on at regular intervals
in all the criminal courts in the country is essentially the same that
it always has been since the Reformation; and accordingly I have not
hesitated to indicate as fully as my original made possible the
procedure, in the narrower sense of the word, followed at the various
trials reported. In the matter of notes I have done my best, in a very
narrow compass, to indicate how the trials were connected with
contemporary history. I have also reminded the reader (to use the
conventional phrase) of the fate of the various characters who are to be
met with in each trial. In particular, I have aimed at bringing to the
fore what must, after all, be the main point of interest in any trial;
namely, who were the counsel briefed, and how they came to be briefed;
who were the judges that tried it, how they came to be judges, and what
position they held in the opinion of the junior bar at the time. For
this part of my work I have taken care to have recourse to the best and
most modern authority, and have stated hardly any facts which are not
vouched for by the editor of the _Dictionary of National Biography_.

In my selection of cases to be reported I have been guided by a variety
of considerations. Personally, I admit that I like the political cases
best. There is a squalor about private crime, which, though I like it
myself, is inferior to politics as a staple. Besides, one has heard of
the heroes of the political trials before; and to read Raleigh's little
retort when Coke complains of a want of words adequately to express his
opinion of Raleigh; to be reminded how the worst of kings proved himself
an admirable lawyer, and the possessor of manners which, in a humbler
station, would assuredly have made the man; to hear the jokes as to
Essex's responsibility for the financial prospects of the proposed
revolution which amused the company of desperate men in the
wine-merchant's upper room; to come across the ghost of the conversation
in lonely St. Martin's Lane between the revellers at the Greyhound
Tavern, and its interruption by the hostile band hurrying to the duel in
Leicester Fields, creates, in my mind at least, the fantastic illusion
that Raleigh, Charles I., Russell, Mohun, and the rest of them were all
once actually alive.

I feel that I have unduly neglected the claims of what, at the period I
have had to do with, was the sister kingdom of Scotland. The Scotch were
not then, taking the diff