"In the succeeding reign of _John_, all the rapacious exactions usual to these Norman kings were not only redoubled, but mingled with outrages of tyranny still more intolerable. * * "In 1207 John took a seventh of the movables of lay and spiritual persons, all murmuring, but none daring to speak against it."--_Ditto_, 446. In Hume's account of the extortions of those times, the following paragraph occurs: "But the most barefaced acts of tyranny and oppression were practised against the Jews, who were entirely out of the protection of the law, and were abandoned to the immeasurable rapacity of the king and his ministers. Besides many other indignities, to which they were continually exposed, it appears that they were once all thrown into prison, and the sum of 66,000 marks exacted for their liberty. At another time, Isaac, the Jew, paid alone 5100 marks; Brun, 3000 marks; Jurnet, 2000; Bennet, 500. At another, Licorica, widow of David, the Jew of Oxford, was required to pay 6000 marks."--_Hume's Hist. Eng., Appendix_ 2. Further accounts of the extortions and oppressions of the kings may be found in Hume's History, Appendix 2, and in Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. 2, p. 435 to 446. By Magna Carta John bound himself to make restitution for some of the spoliations he had committed upon individuals "_without the legal judgment of their peers_."--_See Magna Carta of John_, ch. 60, 61, 65 and 66. One of the great charges, on account of which the nation rose against John, was, that he plundered individuals of their property, "_without legal judgment of their peers_." Now it was evidently very weak and short-sighted in John to expose himself to such charges, _if his laws were really obligatory upon the peers_; because, in that case, he could have enacted any laws that were necessary for his purpose, and then, by civil suits, have brought the cases before juries for their "judgment," and thus have accomplished all his robberies in a perfectly legal manner. There would evidently have been no sense in these complaints, that he deprived men of their property "_without legal judgment of their peers_," if his laws had been binding upon the peers; because he could then have made the same spoliations as well with the judgment of the peers as without it. Taking the judgment of the peers in the matter, would have been only a ridiculous and useless formality, if they were to exercise no discretion or conscience of their own, independently of the laws of the king. It may here be mentioned, in passing, that the same would be true in criminal matters, if the king's laws were obligatory upon juries. As an illustration of what tyranny the kings would sometimes practise, Hume says: