hem enjoyed their offices during pleasure; and when the prince himself
was present, he was the sole judge, and all the others could only
interpose with their advice. There needed but this one court in any
government to put an end to all regular, legal, and exact plans of
liberty; for who durst set himself in opposition to the crown and
ministry, or aspire to the character of being a patron of freedom, while
exposed to so arbitrary a jurisdiction? I much question whether any of
the absolute monarchies in Europe contain, at present, so illegal and
despotic a tribunal.

The court of high commission was another jurisdiction still more
terrible; both because the crime of heresy, of which it took cognizance,
was more undefinable than any civil offence, and because its methods of
inquisition, and of administering oaths, were more contrary to all the
most simple ideas of justice and equity. The fines and imprisonments
imposed by this court were frequent: the deprivations and suspensions of
the clergy for nonconformity were also numerous, and comprehended at one
time the third of all the ecclesiastics of England.[*] The queen, in
a letter to the archbishop of Canterbury, said expressly, that she was
resolved "that no man should be suffered to decline, either on the left
or on the right hand, from the drawn line limited by authority, and by
her laws and injunctions."[**]

But martial law went beyond even these two courts in a prompt, and
arbitrary, and violent method of decision. Whenever there was any
insurrection or public disorder, the crown employed martial law; and it
was, during that time, exercised not only over the soldiers, but over
the whole people; any one might be punished as a rebel, or an aider
and abettor of rebellion, whom the provost martial, or lieutenant of a
county, or their deputies, pleased to suspect. Lord Bacon says, that
the trial at common law granted to the earl of Essex and his
fellow-conspirators, was a favor; for that the case would have borne and
required the severity of martial law.[***]

* Neal, vol. i. p. 479.

** Vol. iv. p. 510.

**** Murden, p. 183.

We have seen instances of its being employed by Queen Mary in defence
of orthodoxy. There remains a letter of Queen Elizabeth's to the earl
of Sussex, after the suppression of the northern rebellion, in which she
sharply reproves him, because she had not heard of his having executed
any criminals by martial law;[*] though it