on whom individually the lash even of public opinion must fall lightly, seeing that its stripes are shared by twelve culprits. No Constitution has ever had so irresponsible a tribunal as that of Trial by Jury. In the reign of Charles II., Juries, in State Prosecutions, were usually packed, a term familiar in the writings of that reign; they were not inaptly represented by Bunyan, in his imaginative Jury impanelled at Vanity Fair. The system of packing, which was practised by all parties in their turns, was directly imputable to those defects in the Constitution, which are now remedied by the Jury and Corporation Acts, and by the alteration of the patents of Judges which had been a cause of mis-directions and cajolery. With regard to the Immunity of Juries, it received a considerable advancement towards perfection in the reign of Charles II.; not, indeed, by any measure of the Legislature, but by a judicial decision, exemplifying those vicissitudes of the Common Law whereby good Judges have accelerated, as bad Judges have retarded, the tide of a Nation's improvement. It is proposed to consider the subject of Juries under the heads of (a) The Constitution of Juries, and (b) The Immunity of Juries. (a) Constitution of Juries. Abuses in the returns of panels of Juries in Corporate Towns have been already noticed, in treating of the Corporation Act. In the Counties (except Middlesex, in which the London Sheriffs cease to be plural, and become, in law, one Sheriff) the King's power over the appointment of Juries was uncontrolled throughout the reign of Charles II. Before the termination of the proceedings of Quo Warranto against the Corporation of London, that is to say, in July, 1683, Lord William Russell came to be tried; the Court, however, previous to the trial, had secured Sheriffs of its own selection, to return appropriate Juries and execute other mandates of State, whose term of office was from Michaelmas, 1682, to the ensuing Michaelmas. It had been an ancient custom in the City of London for the Lord Mayor, shortly before Midsummer Day, at a feast called the Bridgehouse Feast, to drink out of a large gilt cup the health of some citizen as Sheriff for the ensuing year: the cup was then sent to the nominee, if he were present, who forthwith pledged the Lord Mayor: if he were absent, the cup was sent to him for the ceremony of pledging at his own house, being conveyed in the Lord Mayor's State-coach, with the sword-bearer and other civic officers. As in quiet times citizens often preferred being fined to accepting office, the practice of sending the cup after them was called birding for Sheriffs. On Midsummer Day, it had been usual for the Citizens at a Common Hall to confirm the Lord Mayor's Sheriff, and to elect another Sheriff to serve for a year from the ensuing Michaelmas Day. This custom had been intermitted certainly for some years, and, as it would seem, ever since the commencement of the Civil War. In 1682, the King sent for the Lord Mayor, Sir John Moore, and induced him to promise to attempt the revival of the custom of drinking to a Sheriff, and to drink to whomever his Majesty should please to indicate. Roger North writes of this Lord Mayor, "The Lord Mayor's office did not affect the return of Juries, which was their palladium, else he could never have been chosen." A drinkee was next to be selected. And the King was greatly pleased with the suggestion of the name of Sir Dudley North, brother of the Chief Justice, a Turkey merchant, who had recently arrived in England, after a long conversancy with the mode of administering justice in the Levant. The negociation with Sir Dudley North is related by another brother, Roger North, who writes, "His Majesty one day spoke to the Chief Justice (afterwards Lord Keeper), with a world of tenderness, and desired to know if it would be too much to ask of his brother to hold Sheriff upon my Lord Mayor's drinking?...... Now came on the great pinch of the case, which was to make Sir Dudley North sensible of his interest in complying with the King......His Lordship entered into conversation with his brother, ......laid before him an opportunity which proffered itself whereby he might make a fortune if he wanted it, and much enlarge what he had......His lordship shewed that, if he served, the obligation was so transcendent in this conjuncture, even in his Majesty's own sentiment of it, that there could be no employment by commission from the Crown, which would not fall to his share......What opportunity could drop from heaven more propitious to his advancement than this? Nay, the refusal of this, when so fairly offered, would be a positive demerit which would disable any other pretension that might fall in his way." "As for charges," his lordship said, "here, brother, take £1000 to help make good your account; and, if you never have opportunity, by pensions and employments, to reimburse you and me, I will lose my share; else I shall be content to receive this thousand pounds out of one half of your pensions when they come in." The temptation of £1000, like the offer of the same sum in Sheridan's play of the Critic, appears, after a good deal of colloquial fencing, to have touched the Turkey Merchant nearly. The Bridgehouse Feast for 1682, came on. The Lord Mayor, to the surprize of most of the banqueters called for the large gilt cup, and drank to the health of Sir Dudley North, as his Sheriff; and, Sir Dudley being, perhaps designedly, absent, the cup was sent to his residence in the State-coach. Midsummer Day arrived; the question of confirming the Election of North was put to the Livery, when, (as Roger North, his brother, writes) "those who were for confirming held up their hands with arms and fingers distended, all in continual motion together, which made an odd spectacle; but the dissenters, who were much the greater number, screwed their faces into a numberless varieties of No, in such a sour way, and with so much noise, that any one would have thought, that all of them had, in the same instant of time, been possessed with some malignant spirit that convulsed their visages." In the meanwhile Chief Justice North was stationed at the house of the notorious Jeffreys, which was close to Guildhall, in order that conjointly they might advise the Lord Mayor upon every exigency. The Lord Mayor, under their directions, adjourned the Common Hall before a poll, that was commenced by the Sheriffs Pilkington and Shute, was completed. Various other adjournments took place; the Sheriffs, together with their principal supporters, were committed to the Tower for a riot by a Warrant of the Privy Council, but were bailed, and returned to the contest. The Mayor was sent for to the King in Council, the King being present, when he received an Order of Council to proceed with the election de novo, and Chief Justice North, though in a judicial matter, furnished him with a written and signed opinion, that he had an undoubted power of adjournment: opportunities were watched, and ultimately the Lord Mayor, without the intervention of the Sheriffs, proclaimed North and Rich to be duly elected. Sir John Hawles, Solicitor-General of William III., writes, "North and Rich were imposed on the City', one by a shameless trick, the other by open force." Roger North explains the motive (if explanation were wanting) for so much royal solicitude concerning the election of London Sheriffs. He writes, that "Sir Dudley North was called upon to serve the King in the office of Sheriff, in order to rescue the City out of the wretched state it was brought into 1 The particulars of these transactions will be found in North's Life of Lord Keeper Guilford, and North's Examen, and in Luttrell's Diary, extracts from which are given in the notes to the trial of Pilkington and others for a riot in the ninth volume of the State Trials. These notes contain various collateral matters which throw light on the proceedings, as that of the King feasting the loyal apprentices of the City with venison, to conciliate their sweet voices, and, may be, enlist their clubs. Worthy of such bartered gluttony was the specimen preserved by North of a poetical apostrophe to the Lord Mayor who had betrayed the City : "The worshipful Sir John Moor! After Age, that name adore!" by a certain monster that raged in the years 80, 81, 82, stiled Ignoramus."..." It was of the last consequence to the Crown at that time; for the question was whether treason and sedition in London and Middlesex were criminal or not?... Upon the appointment of North and Rich for Sheriffs, Ignoramus vanished; the Party were deprived of their fortress of the Sheriff's office, and laid open, in London and Middlesex, to the great and small shot of the law." In the paper delivered by Lord William Russell at his execution, he commences with the word "Gentlemen," but, in his short speech on the scaffold, he used the expression "Mr Sheriff." Lord John Russell, in his biography, states that Lord William Russell, on the night before he died, resolved to begin his speech, as well as his paper, with the word "Gentlemen;" because, he said, that they were not truly Sheriffs. One Leech was indicted for having said, on coming to poll at the election of a Lord Mayor, that "Sir W. Pritchard shall never be Lord Mayor, unless he comes in by stealth, as North and Rich were made Sheriffs." He pleaded in abatement that his jury had been impannelled by North and Rich who had not been duly elected Sheriffs; this plea was rejected as frivolous, and Leech was fined for it, as for a contempt. Dryden alludes to the success of the Court in the election of Sheriffs, in the second part of his poem of Absalom and Achitophel; typifying Sir J. Moor, under the name of Ziloah, and designating Pilkington and Shute, who were succeeded by North and Rich, as a viler pair than their immediate predecessors Bethell and Cornish: This year did Ziloah rule Jerusalem, |