that high office: yet the judges, by his
direction, went no further than to remand the gentlemen to prison, and
refuse the bail which was offered.[*] Heathe, the attorney-general,
insisted that the court, in imitation of the judges in the thirty-fourth
of Elizabeth,[**] should enter a general judgment, that no bail could
be granted upon a commitment by the king or council.[***] But the judges
wisely declined complying. The nation, they saw, was already to the last
degree exasperated. In the present disposition of men's minds, universal
complaints prevailed, as if the kingdom were reduced to slavery. And
the most invidious prerogative of the crown, it was said, that of
imprisoning the subject, is here openly, and solemnly, and in numerous
instances, exercised for the most invidious purpose; in order to extort
loans, or rather subsidies, without consent of parliament.

* Rushworth, vol. i. p. 462.

** State Trials, vol. vii. p. 147.

*** State Trials, vol. vii. p. 161.

But this was not the only hardship of which the nation thought they had
reason to complain. The army which had made the fruitless expedition to
Cadiz, was dispersed throughout the kingdom; and money was levied upon
the counties for the payment of their quarters.[*]

The soldiers were billeted upon private houses, contrary to custom,
which required that, in all ordinary cases, they should be quartered in
inns and public houses.[**]

Those who had refused or delayed the loan, were sure to be loaded with a
great number of these dangerous and disorderly guests.

Many too, of low condition, who had shown a refractory disposition, were
pressed into the service, and enlisted in the fleet or army,[***] Sir
Peter Hayman, for the same reason, was despatched on an errand to the
Palatinate.[****] Glanville, an eminent lawyer, had been obliged,
during the former interval of parliament, to accept of an office in the
navy.[v]

The soldiers, ill paid and undisciplined, committed many crimes and
outrages, and much increased the public discontents. To prevent these
disorders, martial law, so requisite to the support of discipline, was
exercised upon the soldiers. By a contradiction which is natural when
the people are exasperated, the outrages of the army were complained
of; the remedy was thought still more intolerable.[v*] Though the
expediency, if we are not rather to say the necessity, of martial law
had formerly been deemed of itself a sufficien