by
its own laws, not founded on the common law of the land, but the
voluntary enactment of princes: so that whatever is done by that law is
reckoned not legal in itself, but legal according to forest law, p. 29,
non justum absolute, sed justum secundum legem forestae dicatur. I
believe my translation of _justum_ is right; for he is not writing
satirically.

[368] 13 R. II. c. 2.

[369] Rot. Parl. vol. iii. p. 530.

[370] The apprehension of this compliant spirit in the ministers of
justice led to an excellent act in 2 E. III. c. 8, that the judges shall
not omit to do right for any command under the great or privy seal. And
the conduct of Richard II., who sought absolute power by corrupting or
intimidating them, produced another statute in the eleventh year of his
reign (c. 10), providing that neither letters of the king's signet nor
of the privy seal should from thenceforth be sent in disturbance of the
law. An ordinance of Charles V., king of France, in 1369, directs the
parliament of Paris to pay no regard to any letters under his seal
suspending the course of legal procedure, but to consider them as
surreptitiously obtained. Villaret, t. x. p. 175. This ordinance, which
was sedulously observed, tended very much to confirm the independence
and integrity of that tribunal.

[371] Cotton's Posthuma, p. 221. Howell's State Trials, vol. iii. p. 1.
Hume quotes a grant of the office of constable to the earl of Rivers in
7 E. IV., and infers, unwarrantably enough, that "its authority was in
direct contradiction to Magna Charta; and it is evident that no regular
liberty could subsist with it. It involved a full dictatorial power,
continually subsisting in the state." Hist. of England, c. 22. But by
the very words of this patent the jurisdiction given was only over such
causes quae in curia constabularii Angliae ab antiquo, viz. tempore dicti
Gulielmi conquaestoris, seu aliquo tempore citra, tractari, audiri,
examinari, aut decidi consueverunt aut _jure debuerant aut debent_.
These are expressed, though not very perspicuously, in the statute 13 R.
II. c. 2, that declares the constable's jurisdiction. And the chief
criminal matter reserved by law to the court of this officer was treason
committed out of the kingdom. In violent and revolutionary seasons, such
as the commencement of Edward IV.'s reign, some persons were tried by
martial law before the constable. But, in general, the exercise of
criminal justice by this tribu