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Indiana University Studies 
I, and became odious under the iniquitous judges Scroggs and 
Jeffreys. Scroggs held that to publish any news at all was 
unlawful, and Jeffreys held that gossipy letters containing 
the political rumors of the day were libelous. Elliott and 
others were imprisoned for speeches in Parliament. Prosecu- 
tions continued to be frequent until towards the end of the 
eighteenth century. The common law judges held that the 
only function of the jury was to find whether or not the pris- 
oner published the words and that they referred to the persons 
they were said to refer to ; and that whether they were crim- 
inal or not was for the court. They held that truth was no 
defense. Even Lord Mansfield did nothing to reform the law 
of sedition. But a practitioner by the name of Erskine, a 
barrister of great eloquence, came to the defense of a great 
number of those who were being prosecuted, and it was largely 
because of his efforts that the law was reformed. He con- 
tended for the right of a jury to bring in a general verdict, 
and insisted that criminal intent makes the crime, and that 
criminal intent was a matter of fact and therefore for the 
jury. He did not convince the judges, but he did convince 
the country and Parliament, and as a result there was enacted 
in 1792 Fox’s Libel Act, which established the principle for 
which Erskine had been contending and changed the rule 
which had been laid down by the King’s Bench for a hundred, 
years. However, truth was not made a defense until 1843. 
In 1677 an act was passed abolishing punishment of death 
for heresy. From the time of Henry IV sheriffs had been 
obliged to burn heretics turned over to them by Ecclesiastical 
Courts, but after this statute heresy could be punished only 
by ecclesiastical punishments. 
During this period and long prior thereto there had been 
a great many capital crimes, but in practice executions had 
been rare except for treason, homicide, and other grave of- 
fenses. This was largely due to the fact that many offenders 
obtained the “benefit of clergy” in other cases than treason 
by showing that they could read or write their names and thus 
escaped the jurisdiction of the King’s Bench. But in 1691 
and succeeding years the benefit of clergy was taken away in 
one case after another so that the criminal law became very 
severe and harsh. One of the worst features of the criminal 
law was that a person convicted of a felony, without benefit 
