unished for executing the writs in favor of
these persons. Nay, it was usual to send for people by pursuivants, a
kind of harpies who then attended the orders of the council and high
commission; and they were brought up to London, and constrained by
imprisonment, not only to withdraw their lawful suits, but also to pay
the pursuivants great sums of money. The judges, in the thirty-fourth of
the queen, complain to her majesty of the frequency of this practice. It
is probable that so egregious a tyranny was carried no farther down than
the reign of Elizabeth; since the parliament who presented the petition
of right found no later instances of it.[*] And even these very judges
of Elizabeth, who thus protect the people against the tyranny of the
great, expressly allow, that a person committed by special command of
the queen is not bailable.

It is easy to imagine that, in such a government, no justice could by
course of law be obtained of the sovereign, unless he were willing to
allow it. In the naval expedition undertaken by Raleigh and Frobisher
against the Spaniards, in the year 1592, a very rich carrack was taken,
worth two hundred thousand pounds. The queen's share in the adventure
was only a tenth; but as the prize was so great, and exceeded so much
the expectation of all the adventurers, she was determined not to rest
contented with her share. Raleigh humbly and earnestly begged her to
accept of a hundred thousand pounds in lieu of all demands, or rather
extortions; and says that the present which the proprietors were willing
to make her of eighty thousand pounds, was the greatest that ever prince
received from a subject.[**]

* Rushworth, vol. i. p. 511. Franklyn's Annals, p. 250, 251.

** Strype, vol. iv. p. 128, 129.

But it is no wonder the queen, in her administration, should pay so
little regard to liberty, while the parliament itself, in enacting laws,
was entirely negligent of it. The persecuting statutes which they passed
against Papists and Puritans are extremely contrary to the genius of
freedom; and by exposing such multitudes to the tyranny of priests and
bigots, accustomed the people to the most disgraceful subjection. Their
conferring an unlimited supremacy on the queen, or, what is worse,
acknowledging her inherent right to it, was another proof of their
voluntary servitude.

The law of the twenty-third of her reign, making seditious words against
the queen capital, is also a very tyr