LEGAL PROCEEDINGS. 395 



examination of Peacham*, taken the 10th of this 

 present ; whereby your majesty may perceive, that 



* Edmund Peacham, a minister in Somersetshire [MS. letter 

 of Mr.Chamberlain, dated January 5, 1614-5.] I find one of both 

 his names, who was instituted into the vicarage of Ridge, in 

 Hertfordshire, July 22, 1581, and resigned it in 1587. [New- 

 court, Repertor, Vol. I. p. 864.] Mr. Peacham was committed 

 to the Tower for inserting several treasonable passages in a 

 sermon never preached, nor, as Mr. Justice Croke remarks in his 

 Reports during the reign of king Charles I., p. 125, ever intended 

 to be preached. Mr. Chamberlain, in a letter of the 9th of Fe 

 bruary, 1614-5, to Sir Dudley Carleton, mentions Mr.Peacliam s 

 having been &quot; stretched already, though he be an old man, and, 

 they say, much above threescore : but they could wring nothing 

 out of him more than they had at first in his papers. Yet the 

 king is extremely incensed against him, and will have him pro 

 secuted to the uttermost.&quot; In another letter, dated February 

 23, we are informed, that the king, since his coming to London 

 on the 15th, had had &quot; the opinion of the judges severally in 

 Peacham s case; and it is said, that most of them concur to 

 find it treason : yet my lord chief justice [Coke] is for the con 

 trary ; and if the lord Hobart, that rides the western circuit, 

 can be drawn to jump with his colleague, the chief baron 

 [Tanfield] it is thought he shall be sent down to be tried, and 

 trussed up in Somersetshire.&quot; In a letter of the 2d of March, 

 1614-5, Mr. Chamberlain writes, &quot;Peacham s trial at the western 

 assizes is put off, and his journey stayed, though Sir Randall 

 Crew, the king s Serjeant, and Sir Henry Yelverton, the solicitor, 

 were ready to go to horse to have waited on him there.&quot; 

 &quot; Peacham, the minister, adds he in a letter of the 13th of July, 

 1615, that hath been this twelvemonth in the Tower, is sent down 

 to be tried for treason in Somersetshire before the lord chief 

 baron and Sir Henry Montagu the recorder. The lord Hobart 

 gave over that circuit the last assizes. Sir Randall Crew and 

 Sir Henry Yelverton, the king s Serjeant and solicitor, are sent 

 down to prosecute the trial.&quot; The event of this trial, which was 



