Religious persecution was rife every where, and prosecutions for ecclesiastical offences numerous, consequently due enforce ment of the penal Acts of the period against 'dissenters and such-like vermin' must have occupied a considerable amount of the time and attention of the worthy administrators of the law. . . . As may be expected, eating flesh in Lent or on fish-days was a heinous offence, pun ishable by fine or imprisonment, during the happy Carolinian period of English religious freedom; and by 35 Eliz., c. 7 (not then re pealed), 'any person suffering such offence in •his house and not discovering it forfeited 133. 4d.' Where, however, a person, 'being sick and in physick and much inclined to sickness and of a weak constitution of body, could not eat or feed upon fish or restrain from eating of flesh/ the archbishop, or the vicar of the parish as his deputy, might grant the invalid a special license rendering him no longer liable to penalties. If how ever, the interesting invalid, in search of health, ventured to travel on a Sunday and fell among thieves during his journey, his lawful penalties against the hundred were forfeited as a punishment for his wicked and illegal peregrinations. General warrants at this period were still in vogue, and any two justices desirous of 'flushing a covey' of vagabonds had only to issue a precept under 7 Jac. i, c. 4, tothe con stable and headboroughs of the district in which he resided to secure sufficient delin quents to satisfy any reasonable being's judi cial cravings. The condign .punishments ordinarily inflicted by 'Mr. Justice Shallow' were, however, sometimes tempered by economical considerations, and his wrath against beggars on the highway seems to have applied to the flagitious act in his own immediate neighborhood rather than to beg ging in the abstract; a special license to beg, •under 22 Hen. 8, c. 12, being occasionally granted to 'a very poor man' upon an in formation that 'the town where he resided re at present charged with more poor and impotent folk than it is able to relieve.' Two
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hundred years since, in spite of the startling lesson of the ßoth Jan. 1649, the doctrine of Divine right still flourished, and the healing power of the Creator's vicegerent in cases of scrofula was fully believed in, and often implored by the sick; though, in order that virtue should not go out of the sacred body of the monarch twice, a magistrate's certifi cate that the ailing child had not already been touched was requisite before the health-giving finger of royalty could be im pressed on the unfortunate sufferer from King's Evil. In spite, however, of this precaution, the supply was not equal to the demand, and Charles II., by Order in Council, established a close time for monarchs, during which their healing virtues were allowed to accumu late. . . . Even the majesty of death was not exempt from magisterial jurisdiction, a special statute enacting (30 Car. 2, c. 3), under penalty of £5, recoverable by distress, that no corpse should be shrouded for burial in any material save pure wool only. And, in order to prevent any evasion of this post mortem encouragement of the wool trade, the poor body could not receive the last rites of the Church, or rest in holy ground to wait the great awakening, without a magistrate's warranty that it had been duly enwrapped in proper taxpaying cere clothes. THE following Lawyer's Funny Stories are related by Eld Perkins in the Sunday Maga zine: They told me a story up in Oldtown, Maineí about Chief Justice Melville W. Ful ler. Young Fuller belonged to the Oldtown Debating Club. One evening the debate was for and against capital punishment. The deacon of the church was for hanging, and young Fuller opposed him in the debate. Deacon Skinner began his debate with a knock-down argument. He held up a big family Bible, saying: "I will read to you de baters who oppose capital punishment what God said to Moses: 'Who so sheddeth man's
