312 LETTERS FROM BIRCH. 



place, I have, perceiving your majesty s good liking of what 

 I propounded, taken order that there shall be a declaration 

 concerning the cause in the King s Bench, by occasion of 

 punishment of the offence of his keeper ; and another in 

 chancery, upon the occasion of moving for an order, accord 

 ing to his just and righteous report. And yet withal, I 

 have set on work a good pen* (and myself will overlook it) 

 for making some little pamphlet fit to fly abroad in the 

 country. 



For your majesty s proclamation touching the wearing 

 of cloth, after I had drawn a form as near as I could to 

 your majesty s direction, I propounded it to the lords, my 

 Lord Chancellor being then absent ; and after their lord 

 ships good approbation, and some points by them altered, 

 I obtained leave of them to confer thereupon with my Lord 

 Chancellor, and some principal judges, which I did this 

 afternoon ; so as, it being now perfected, I shall offer it to 

 the board to-morrow, and so send it to your majesty. 



So humbly craving your majesty s pardon for troubling 

 you with so long a letter, specially being accompanied with 

 other papers, I ever rest 



Your Majesty s most humble and bounden Servant, 



This 21st of November, FR. BACON. 



at ten at night, 1616. 



Sir Edward Coke to the King. 



Most gracious Sovereign, 



I think it now my duty to inform your majesty of the 

 motives that induced the Lord Chancellor and judges to 

 resolve, that a murder or felony committed by one Eng 

 lishman upon another in a foreign kingdom shall be pun 

 ished before the constable and marshal here in England. 



First, In the book-case, in the 13th year of King Henry 

 IV., in whose reign the statute was made, it is expressly 

 said, one liege-man was killed in Scotland by another 

 liege-man; and the wife of him that was killed did sue 

 an appeal of murder in the constable s court of England. 

 Vide Statutum, saith the book, de primo Henrici iV^. cap. 

 14. Et contemporanea expositio est fortissimo, in Lege. 

 Stanford,^ an author without exception, saith thus, fol. 



* Mr. Trott. 



t Sir William, the most ancient writer on the pleas of the crown. He was 

 born in Middlesex, August 22, 1509, educated in the University of Oxford, 

 studied the law at Gray s Inn, in which he was elected autumn reader in 1545, 

 made Serjeant in 1552, the year following Queen s serjeant, and in 1554, one 

 of the justices of the Common Pleas. He died August 28, 1558. 



