proceeding in England still nearer to the
practice of the inquisition, letters were written to Lord North and
others, enjoining them "to put to the torture such obstinate persons as
would not confess, and there to order them at their discretion."[**]

* Burnet, vol. ii. Coll. 32.

** Burnet, vol. iii. p. 243.

Secret spies, also, and informers were employed, according to the
practice of that iniquitous tribunal. Instructions were given to the
justices of peace--that they should call secretly before them one or two
honest persons within their limits, or more, at their discretion, and
command them by oath, or otherwise, that they shall secretly learn and
search out such persons as shall evil behave themselves in church,
or idly, or shall despise openly by words the king's or queen's
proceedings, or go about to make any commotion, or tell any seditious
tales or news. And also that the same persons, so to be appointed,
shall declare to the same justices of peace the ill behavior of lewd
disordered persons, whether it shall be for using unlawful games, and
such other light behavior of such suspected persons; and that the
same information shall be given secretly to the justices; and the same
justices shall call such accused persons before them, and examine them,
without declaring by whom they were accused. And that the same justices
shall, upon their examination, punish the offenders according as their
offences shall appear, upon the accusement and examination, by their
discretion, either by open punishment or "by good abearing."[*] In some
respects this tyrannical edict even exceeded the oppression of the
inquisition, by introducing into every part of government the same
iniquities which that tribunal practises for the extirpation of heresy
only, and which are in some measure necessary, wherever that end is
earnestly pursued.

But the court had devised a more expeditious and summary method of
supporting orthodoxy than even the inquisition itself. They issued
a proclamation against books of heresy treason, and sedition, and
declared, "that whosoever had any of these books, and did not presently
burn them, without reading them or showing them to any other person,
should be esteemed rebels, and without any further delay be executed by
martial law."[**] From the state of the English government during that
period, it is not so much the illegality of these proceedings, as their
violence and their pernicious tendency,