when the prisoner was actually being tried under its provisions, is an instance of un blushing effrontery without parallel. Considering the danger of the Gunpowder Plot (2 St. Tr. 159), neither the arrests nor the executions which followed seem con spicuously excessive. On the whole, the
Sir Everard Digby, he called upon the pris oner "to admire the great moderation and mercy of the King in that for so exorbitant a crime no new torture answerable thereunto was devised to be inflicted upon him." The proceedings against Darnel and others (3 St. Tr. i) belong to political rather than
THOMAS VENTVORTH, KARL OF STRAFFORD.
trials of the conspirators were fairer than many of a similar nature under the Tudors, although Garnet was condemned on the statements of persons who had already been executed. Coke, who prosecuted, made an elaborate and highly characteristic speech, concluding with a panegyric on the barbar ous punishment for treason. In the case of
to judicial history. The prosecution of Eliot and his fellow-members of Parliament in 1629 for speeches made in Parliament (3 St. Tr. 293) was, of course, an arbitrary exerdse of power on the part of the crown. The con viction of the members was reversed in 1668 on a writ of error brought by Hollis. This case is an earlv authority for the doctrine
