CASE OE THE POST-NATI OF SCOTLAND. 163 



Guienne were governed by the laws of England : 

 First that cannot be in reason ; for it is a true 

 ground, That wheresoever any prince s title unto any 

 country is by law, he can never change the laws, 

 for that they create his title ; and therefore, no doubt 

 those duchies retained their own laws ; which if they 

 did, then they could not be subject to the laws 

 of England. And next, again, the fact or practice 

 was otherwise, as appeareth by all consent of story 

 and record; for those duchies continued governed 

 by the civil law, their trials by witnesses, and not by 

 jury, their lands testamentary, and the like. 



Now for the colours that some have endeavoured 

 to give, that they should have been subordinate to 

 the government of England ; they were partly weak, 

 and partly such as make strongly against them ; 

 for as to that, that writs of &quot; Habeas Corpus&quot; under 

 the great seal of England have gone to Gascoigne, 

 it is no manner of proof; for that the king s writs, 

 which are mandatory, and not writs of ordinary 

 justice, may go to his subjects into any foreign parts 

 whatsoever, and under what seal it pleaseth him to 

 use. And as to that, that some acts of parliament 

 have been cited, wherein the parliaments of England 

 have taken upon them to order matters of Gas- 

 coigne ; if those statutes be well looked into, nothing 

 doth more plainly convince the contrary, for they 

 intermeddle with nothing but that that concerneth 

 either the English subjects personally, or the terri 

 tories of England locally, and never the subjects of 



