HUMANE JURIES 1 8 1 



for stealing a horse, and afterwards discovered that 

 he was innocent, according to a monument still to be 

 seen in Odstock churchyard. In 1802 John Everett 

 suffered death for uttering forged bank-notes, followed 

 in 1820 by William Lee, who died for the same 

 offence. So late as 1835, two men were hanged for 

 arson ; but public opinion had already been aroused 

 against such severity, judges and juries taking every 

 advantage offered by faults in the drawing up of 

 indictments to acquit all those criminals not guilty 

 of murder whose crimes were then met by capital 

 punishment. The statutes left no choice but death 

 for the convicted incendiary, the horse- or sheep- 

 stealer, and many another ; and so many a guilty 

 person was acquitted by judges and juries horrified 

 by the thought of incurring blood -guiltiness by 

 sending such men to the scaffold. The law allowed 

 loopholes for escape, and so when the straw-m^, to 

 which a prisoner was charged with setting fire, was 

 proved to have been hay, he was found ' Not guilty.' 

 Blackstone called this action taken by juries 'pious 

 perjury,' and so it certainly was when, to avoid 

 shedding blood, they used to find £5 and £10 notes 

 which prisoners sometimes were charged with stealing, 

 to be articles to the value of twelvepence or a few 

 shillings, according as the case required. 



The last lawless scenes around Salisbury were 

 enacted at the close of 1830, when the so-called 

 ' Machinery Riots,' which had spread all over the 

 country, culminated here in fights between the Wilt- 

 shire Yeomanry and the discontented agricultural 

 labourers, who, fearing that steam machinery, then 



