170 Records of the Rising in the West, A.D. 1655. 
and moderne, was adjudged treason to leavy warre against the chiefe magistrate; 
aggravating the same with the circumstances of tyme, place, and persons of 
the judges; the delay of justice, and the damage of the people, and taking 
away the commissions from the judges. Hee likewise declared the great obligation 
lying on the people to his highness, for directing this offence to be tryed by 
commission in the ordinary legall way, and not by extraordinary commissions, 
as he might have done in such tymes of such imminent danger; wherein hee 
manifested his carefull desire to maintayne the lawes. 
It is a convenient time to say a few words on the law as above 
enunciated, which is replete with interest and difficulty.! The length 
and breadth of treason till the time of King Edward III, the 
Judges themselves only knew ; founding, so they said, their decisions 
on the common law of the land. A vast, expanding ocean was the 
common law; and during that King’s reign it burst in, so some 
thought, upon the liberties of the subject. The King was petitioned 
to stay the waves, and he set up the Statute of Treason, as a barrier 
against further encroachments. 
It declares 
“That it shall be treason when a man doth compass or imagine the death of 
our Lord the king or of our lady the Queen his wife, or of their son and heir 
&e. . . . or ifa man do levy war against our Lord the King in his realm, 
or be adherent to the king’s enemies, in his realm, giving them aid and comfort 
in the realm or elsewhere, and thereof be provably attainted of open deed by 
the people of their [own] condition.” 
There are other provisions one of which makes it treason to kill 
the king’s judges.® Of course this statute did not abolish, but 
only more clearly defined the common law, which still existed where 
it was not inconsistent. 
The Parliaments of Henry VII. and Elizabeth added somewhat ; 
but it is unnecessary to set their enactments out here, as they did 
not repeal the above provisions. It may be well to say, however, 
that the statute of Henry VII. (11. Hen. VII. c. 1.) protected those 
who served a king de facto from penalties and forfeitures. 
1 Whether what happened at Salisbury was treason or riot I reserve till Pen- 
ruddock’s trial, as he discusses it. It was treason against the State, according 
to modern American authorities, as the subversion of its government, as then 
constituted, was contemplated. 1 Kent’s Com., 451, and American Law Mag., 
Jan., 1845. 
2 There was no discussion on this section. 
