offence in any of the premises shall be adjudged high treason.'[1]
The terrible powers which were thus committed to the Government lie on the surface of this language; but comprehensive as the statute appears, it was still further extended by the interpretation of the lawyers. In order to fall under its penalties it was held not to be necessary that positive guilt should be proved in any one of the specified offences; it was enough if a man refused to give satisfactory answers when subjected to official examination.[2] At the discretion of the King or his ministers the active consent to the supremacy might be required of any person on whom they pleased to call, under penalty to the recusant of the dreadful death of a traitor. So extreme a measure can only be regarded as a remedy for an evil which was also extreme; and as on the return of quiet times the Parliament made haste to repeal a law which was no longer required, so in the enactment of that law we are bound to believe that they were not betraying English liberties in a spirit of careless complacency; but that they believed truly that the security of the State required unusual precautions. The nation was standing with its sword half drawn in the face of an armed Europe, and it was no time to permit
- ↑ 26 Hen. VIII. c. 13.
- ↑ More warned Fisher of this. He 'did send Mr Fisher word by a letter that Mr Solicitor had showed him, that it was all one not to answer, and to say against the statute what a man would, as all the learned men in England would justify.'—State Papers, vol. i. p. 434.
