e said rebellious and incorrigible offenders
shall be found to have committed the said great offences."[*] I suppose
it would be difficult to produce an instance of such an act of authority
in any place nearer than Muscovy. The patent of high constable, granted
to Earl Rivers by Edward IV., proves the nature of the office. The
powers are unlimited, perpetual, and remain in force during peace as
well as during war and rebellion. The parliament in Edward VI.'s reign
acknowledged the jurisdiction of the constable and martial's court to be
part of the law of the land.[**]

The star chamber, and high commission, and court martial, though
arbitrary jurisdictions, had still some pretence of a trial, at least of
a sentence; but there was a grievous punishment very generally inflicted
in that age, without any other authority than the warrant of a secretary
of state or of the privy council;[***] and that was, imprisonment in any
jail, and during any time, that the ministers should think proper. In
suspicious times, all the jails were full of prisoners of state; and
these unhappy victims of public jealousy were sometimes thrown into
dungeons, and loaded with irons, and treated in the most cruel manner,
without their being able to obtain any remedy from law.

This practice was an indirect way of employing torture: but the rack
itself, though not admitted in the ordinary execution of justice,[****]
was frequently used, upon any suspicion, by authority of a warrant from
a secretary or the privy council. Even the council in the marches of
Wales was empowered, by their very commission, to make use of torture
whenever they thought proper.[v]

* Rymer, vol. xvi. p. 279.

** 7 Edw. VI. cap. 20. See Sir John Davis's Question
concerning Impositions, p. 9.

*** In 1588, the lord mayor committed several citizens to
prison, because they refused to pay the loan demanded of
them. Murden, p. 632.

**** Harrison, chap. 11.

v Haynes, p 196. See further, La Boderie, vol. i. p. 211.

There cannot be a stronger proof how lightly the rack was employed than
the following story, told by Lord Bacon. We shall give it in his own
words: "The queen was mightily incensed against Haywarde, on account of
a book he dedicated to Lord Essex, being a story of the first year of
Henry IV., thinking it a seditious prelude to put into the people's
heads boldness and faction:[*] she said, she had an opinion that there