104 The Star Chamber : its Practice and Procedure. 



cases there are in abundance, but Hudson's words are conclu- 

 sive to show the practice of the court toward those whom it 

 considered to have broken their oaths to ' ' well and truly try, 

 and true deliverance make/' He says, "And in the reigns of 

 Henry VII., Henry VIII., Queen Mary, and the beginning of 

 Queen Elizabeth's reign, there was scarce one term pretermitted 

 but some grand inquest or jury was fined for acquitting felons 

 or murderers." In this way the Star Chamber which refrained 

 from sentences of death, sometimes intimidated juries into ver- 

 dicts which were against their consciences and their oaths, for 

 it was not often a jury made such a stand as that which 

 acquitted Sir Nicholas Throckmorton. But before condemning 

 wholly the practice of the court in regard to juries, it will be 

 as well to ascertain whether there was any ground on which its 

 practice might rest, and very little search will prove that there 

 actually was such ground. Hudson cites a number of cases 

 in which the jury had been " laboured" beforehand, and gave 

 their verdict without regard to the evidence ; but a less partial 

 witness than he, Sir Francis Pal grave, in his treatise on the 

 Privy Council already quoted, says, " trial by jury has been, 

 and may be, so affected by the general position of society as to 

 become an active instrument of mischief and oppression. Trial 

 by jury may now be called a tribunal composed of the peers of 

 the defendant or of the accused. It has become so, at least in 

 theory, by the alteration of the law, which allows the jury to 

 be the judges of the truth of the evidence given before them,, 

 but this practice is comparatively recent, and engrafted upon 

 the ancient institution." The jurors in former times were in 

 fact the witnesses, being summoned for the very reason that 

 they knew or were supposed to know, about the facts in the 

 cause to be tried. The sheriff was bound to summon such 

 persons whose knowledge was often derived from no more than 

 mere gossip, the hearsay of the village or the district. Jurors 

 with minds already prejudiced, or so well informed upon the 

 facts of the case as to allow of prejudices previously enter- 

 tained having play, were the triers ; and it is not remarkable 

 that they often arrived at verdicts both improper and untrue. 

 In much later times the difficulty has been experienced of 

 procuring the only verdicts warranted by the evidence — 

 e. g., Welsh juries — imbued with local or national sympathies, 

 and when the potency of such sympathies in remote ages, 

 coupled with the constitution of the juries as already described 

 is taken into consideration, one is able to see at least a possi- 

 ble need for the interference of the council in order to keep 

 clean the fountains of justice. In the 33 Edward I., the king 

 and council agreed upon a definition of " conspiracy," which 

 was intended to include jurors. Those who bound themselves 



