A.D. 1719. CONVICTION FOR PRINTING A LIBEL. وو 85 tender, for the Tories believed, as a principle of religion, in the “divine right of Kings," and the Whig maxim of " Vox populi vox Dei" led to the same result, as the vast majority of the population of this country were now for King James. The poor printer contended that this could not be considered a malicious or advised asserting of the title of the Pretender, as he had only been acting in his trade, and the composition itself was merely thoughtless; but the Lord Chief Justice, according to the strict rigour of the law, laid down to the jury that "the fact implied malice, and that doing a thing advisedly is doing it with a consciousness of what is done; '-so there was a verdict of "guilty." The prisoner's counsel then moved in arrest of judgment that the indictment charged no crime, for being in Latin it used the word "impressit" to predicate the printing of the book, whereas "imprimere," in the just meaning of the Latin tongue, has no such meaning, printing not being known among the Romans; and at all events the practice should have been followed which was proper where any doubt existed as to the meaning of a Latin word in law proceedings, and that the indictment should have run 66 IMPRESSIT, anglice printed." But the Chief Justice ruled that " 'imprimere " had acquired the meaning of "to print," as we may know from the "imprimatur" on books the printing of which was permitted. The frightful sentence was accordingly passed, and, I am shocked to say, was carried into full execution at Tyburn.” This appears to me the hardest case of treason which is to be found after the Revolution. The young man might properly have been imprisoned for some months for assisting in the publication of a libel; but it was a confounding of the real distinctions of crimes, to hang, embowel, behead, and quarter him as a traitor. From Sir Peter King's known humanity, I think we may safely infer that this execution took place against his recommendation. Upon all occasions when we have sufficient means of examining his conduct, we uniformily find him exerting A.D. 1719himself to mitigate the misfortunes, and to soothe the 1720. sufferings, of others. About this time, a complaint being made to him of some severities towards prisoners confined in the Fleet under Common Pleas process, and the warden having urged in answer the insecurity of the prison, whereby he incurred great responsibility from the danger of the prisoners escaping, the Chief Justice replied, "Then you may raise y 15 St. Tr. 1323-1404. your walls higher, but there shall be no prison within a prison where I bear rule." Lord Chief Justice King went as Judge of Assize twice a year, and he broke through the old custom for a Judge to continue to " ride the same circuit," for he visited all the English circuits in their turn, or, as it has been since technically called in Westminster Hall, "he ran the gauntlet." When about to start on the Norfolk Circuit in the summer of 1720 he received the following curious letter to excuse the non-attendance of the Vice-chancellor and Heads of Houses at Cambridge, on account of the controversy then raging between them and Bentley, the celebrated Master of Trinity, who, by ancient usage, had to lodge the Judges during the assizes in his college: "My Lord, "I would have waited on your Lordship, but for the terrible apprehensions I am under, that my poor wife, who is lately brought to bed, will shortly breathe her last. Under this anxiety, I am forc'd, by letters from Cambridge, to bear in mind the affairs of that University. Thither your Lordship is quickly going, and believe me, my Lord, none upon earth are more ready to pay you due respect and honour than we are. But, my Lord, the Master of Trinity has taken a resolution, and put it in practice, to make the Vice-Ch' and Heads wait in the open Court among the mob, or at least to be taken into a comon room among the footmen, when they come to pay their duty to you. Till he shall come to a better mind (which in this and all other respects I wish he may), I beg leave to depend on your Lordship's and Mr. Justice Blencoe's goodness, that you will favourably interpret this behaviour of the University, and accept your usual present from the hands of the Bedell; if the Heads are not allow'd the constant customary convenience in waiting upon you. Pardon this trouble, my Lord, and the confusion I am in. "I am, with the greatest respect, "Great Russell Street, July 28, 1720." z Lord Lovelace's MSS.-Gooch, the Master of Caius, had been Vice-Chancellor in 1718, and had pronounced the famous sentence whereby Bentley was deprived of his degrees -till it was reversed by an appeal to the courts of law. The Judges being afterwards at Trinity Lodge, one of them took occasion to observe," Dr. Bentley, you have not yet thanked us for what we have done for you." Bentley: "What am I to thank you for? "T. GOOCH." Is it for only doing me justice after a long protracted law-suit? Had you, indeed, restored me at once to my rights, I might have expressed my obligations; but such have been your delays, that if I had not been an economist in my earlier years, I must have been ruined by the pursuit of justice."-Life of Bentley, by Monk, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, vol. ii. 211. A.D. 1722. A very noted case, though not of a political nature, came before Lord Chief Justice King two years after, at Bury St. Edmunds, in which, although substantial justice was done and the decision has been since recognised, I must confess it seems to me that the law was rather strained. Arundel Coke, Esq., a gentleman of fortune in the county of Suffolk, and John Woodburne, his servant, were capitally indicted on the "Coventry Act" for slitting the nose of Edward Crispe, Esq., Coke's brother-in-law, "with intent to maim and disfigure him." It appeared in evidence that Mrs. Coke was entitled to a large estate on the death of her brother, Mr. Crispe; that Mr. Coke, to get possession of this estate, resolved to murder Mr. Crispe; that with this view he inveigled Mr. Crispe at midnight into a churchyard; that there Woodburne, by Mr. Coke's orders, assaulted Mr. Crispe with a bill-hook, and gave him several wounds, which were believed to be mortal; that he was left for dead in the churchyard; that he was nevertheless carried by some countrymen passing by to Mr. Coke's house, which was close by; that he recovered,-and that one of the wounds he received was a cut across the nose. The prisoners being called upon for their defence, Coke boldly contended that this case did not come within the Coventry Act, 22 and 23 Car. II., which enacts that if any person of malice aforethought, and by lying-in-wait, shall unlawfully slit the nose, &c., with intent to maim or disfigure, he shall be guilty of felony without benefit of clergy." Now the act, as was well known from its history, and as was apparent from its terms, was meant to apply to the outrage of maiming or disfiguring a man whom there was no intention to deprive of life, but who was afterwards to gratify the malice of an enemy by carrying about with him, and exhibiting in society, the mark of disgrace set upon his person. The attempt to put a fellow-creature to death might morally be a higher crime, but, not being the crime described in the statute, it remained as at common law, only an aggravated misdemeanor, to be punished by fine and imprisonment. The legislature might be hereafter called upon to make such an attempt a capital offence, but a court of justice could not properly extend to it a statute passed entirely alio intuitu. Now here there clearly was no wish that Mr. Crispe should live ridiculous with a mutilated visage; the intention was not to disfigure, but to murder him for his estate; the wound which merely cut the nose was intended, like others inflicted on different parts of his body, to be mortal, and both the accused persons when they left him in the churchyard believed that their real object had been fully accomplished. However, Lord Chief Justice King ruled that if the prisoners maliciously inflicted a wound which amounted to a slitting of the nose, and which disfigured the prosecutor, the case was within the act, although the real object was to murder, not to disfigure; saying, "There are cases in which an unlawful or felonious intent to do one act may be carried over to another act done in prosecution thereof, and such other act will be felony, because done in prosecution of an unlawful or felonious intent. As if a man shoots at wild fowl wherein no one hath any property, and by such shooting happens unawares to kill a man; this homicide is not felony, but only a misadventure or chance-medley, because it was an accident in the doing of a lawful act: but if this man had shot at a tame fowl wherein another had property, but not with intention to steal it, and by such shooting had accidentally killed a man, he would then have been guilty of manslaughter, because done in prosecution of an unlawful act, viz. committing a trespass upon another's property; but if he had had an intention of stealing this tame fowl, then such accidental killing of a man would have been murder, because done in prosecution of a felonious intent, viz. an intent to steal. Here, although the ultimate intention was to murder, there might be an intermediate intention to disfigure, and one might take effect while the other did not. An intention to kill does not exclude an intention to disfigure. The instrument made use of in this attempt was a bill or hedging hook, which, in its own nature, is proper for cutting, maiming, and disfiguring.' The means made use of to effect the murder must be considered, and the jury will say whether every blow and cut, and the consequences thereof, were not intended as well as the end for which it is alleged those blows and cuts were given." The prisoners were convicted and executed; but the case may be regarded as a pendant to that before Lord Chief Justice Sir James Mansfield, where a man who gave a horse a draught for the purpose of fraudulently winning a wager on a race, was hanged for killing the horse "out of malice to the owner," whose name he did not know.a a In the spring of 1720 Lord Chief Justice King went the Northern Circuit with Mr. Justice Dormer; and there lies before me a very curious account of their joint expenses. In all its minute details it would be very in. teresting to circuiteering lawyers, but I can only venture to give a short abstract of it: The A.D. 1718. OPINION ON ROYAL MARRIAGES. 89 I shall only mention one other opinion of Sir Peter King while Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, which, A.D. 1718. though most honestly and conscientiously given, greatly pleased George I., and probably smoothed his way to the woolsack. This was on the dispute between the reigning Sovereign and his son, respecting the marriage and education of the royal grandchildren. "The question is," said he, "whether such marriage can be without the consent of the Crown? and I think it cannot. As to marriage in fact in the royal family, nobody can instance any to be made these 500 years without the Crown's consent. Where the Crown has not been consulted, such a marriage has been considered a crime. The case of Lord Brandon, in Henry VIII.'s time, and the case of Lady [At Lancaster I copy at length as a specimen :] Corporation presented a quarter of beef, a mutton, a veal, and 2 dozen of wine 0 1 0 Disbursed in all 107 4 6 There is endorsed a receipt of this sum from "The Rt Honble the Lord Chief Justice King." |