To be thus
arrested was to be seized "a le glaive de l'espee." (_Vetus Consuetudo
Normanniae_, MS. part I, sect. I, ch. 11.) The jurisconsults referred
besides "_in Charta Ludovici Hutum pro Normannis_, chapter _Servientes
spathae_." _Servientes spathae_, in the gradual approach of base Latin
to our idioms, became _sergentes spadae_.

These silent arrests were the contrary of the _Clameur de Haro_, and
gave warning that it was advisable to hold one's tongue until such time
as light should be thrown upon certain matters still in the dark. They
signified questions reserved, and showed in the operation of the police
a certain amount of _raison d'etat_.

The legal term "private" was applied to arrests of this description. It
was thus that Edward III., according to some chroniclers, caused
Mortimer to be seized in the bed of his mother, Isabella of France.
This, again, we may take leave to doubt; for Mortimer sustained a siege
in his town before being captured.

Warwick, the king-maker, delighted in practising this mode of "attaching
people." Cromwell made use of it, especially in Connaught; and it was
with this precaution of silence that Trailie Arcklo, a relation of the
Earl of Ormond, was arrested at Kilmacaugh.

These captures of the body by the mere motion of justice represented
rather the _mandat de comparution_ than the warrant of arrest. Sometimes
they were but processes of inquiry, and even argued, by the silence
imposed upon all, a certain consideration for the person seized. For the
mass of the people, little versed as they were in the estimate of such
shades of difference, they had peculiar terrors.

It must not be forgotten that in 1705, and even much later, England was
far from being what she is to-day. The general features of its
constitution were confused and at times very oppressive. Daniel Defoe,
who had himself had a taste of the pillory, characterizes the social
order of England, somewhere in his writings, as the "iron hands of the
law." There was not only the law; there was its arbitrary
administration. We have but to recall Steele, ejected from Parliament;
Locke, driven from his chair; Hobbes and Gibbon, compelled to flight;
Charles Churchill, Hume, and Priestley, persecuted; John Wilkes sent to
the Tower. The task would be a long one, were we to count over the
victims of the statute against seditious libel. The Inquisition had, to
some extent, spread its arrangements throughout Europe, and its pol