of not guilty whenever the arraigned pris oner declines to answer was enacted in Eng land, but American practice had antedated the procedure. This refusal to plead, and enduring of the punishment unto death, was only made by malefactors who desired to save their estate from forfeiture to the crown, — a result to every executed felon, and coupled with attainder of his blood to the prevention of inheritance. The mode of punishment is indeed too hideous and aw ful for modern print, yet it was bravely en dured by many whose love of their children and heirs was superior to sense of physical and mental suffering. Between the years 1 609-16 18, in London and its ruralities, twenty-nine men and three women endured the torture and saved attainder. In another corner of the law's lumber room lie small folds of tapestry outlined with statutory figures, all much moth-eaten, which go under the name of sumptuary law,
- — law regulating dress and food. For Par
liament once carried on the businesses of tailoring and catering — a business that in the United States some legislatures have en gaged in — as for instance, Maine in its Neal Dow, and New York in its Raines en actments as regards the when, and how, and what that men may drink whenever dis posed to "put into their mouths an enemy to steal away their brains." A.D. 1336-—-period when France mourn ed and England rejoiced over the historic battle of Cressy — saw the first statute regu lating private apparel, and the food of the subjects of King Edward III. "No one" quoth chapter 3 of the tenth year of his reign, " shall have more than two courses at dinner, nor more than two kinds of meat, and only one soup," excepting on certain holidays when feeding became unlimited, perhaps for the benefit of the physicians of the period. Soon common folk were for bidden to wear furs. And by the way, our own Congress has lately taken to statutemaking about the wearing of seal-skin
sacques by women folk; all perhaps by vir tue of that old English precedent. That King Edward of glorious annals instigated other statutes confining the wearing of silks, gold brocade and precious jewels to only wealthy nobles. " This to improve the eco nomical and virtuous habits of my people," quoth the King; but his lumbering law op erated detrimentally on commerce, by driv ing out of the kingdom skillful workmen and artisans, who depended on the growing refinement of the better classes, to seek employment in other countries that had no such stringent measures. Other legislative tapestries in the lumber room show how the dress of the subjects from ploughmen to peers was regulated, and how its price was prescribed. For instance, no woman should wear a veil costing over a shilling; servants should not wear silken embroidery, and could not eat of flesh or fish oftener than once a day. Tapestry of the next reign, of profligate and impulsive Richard II, in the same lum ber room, shows embroidered on it his stat utes prohibitory of large hanging sleeves; much as canons of good taste now-a-days prohibit them. In England's record office on Fetter Lane, London, under shadow of Lincoln's Inn, may be inspected an "Act of Apparel" forbidding yeomen to wear caps of velvet, and prescribing for nobles the length of peaks to the toes of shoes. Capricious James I repealed in the very first year of his reign all the statutes about apparel. But another James (he the second of Scotland) furnished more statutory tapestry of the same sort, and on one of the hangings in the law's lumber room may be read (1457) : "Na woman shall cum to mercat or kirk with her face mussled that she may nocht be kenned : and so under pain of escheit of the churchia" (hood), and on another, "All were forbiddeth to weare beardes on the upper lip." The contents of the law's lumber room
