fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the court of the constable and marshal, whose jurisdiction was considered as of a military nature, and whose proceedings were not according to the course of the common law, sometimes tried offenders by what was called martial law, but only, I believe, either during, or not long after, a serious rebellion. This tribunal fell into disuse under the Tudors. But Mary had executed some of those taken in Wyatt's insurrection without regular process, though their leader had his trial by a jury. Elizabeth, always hasty in passion and quick to punish, would have resorted to this summary course on a slighter occasion. One Pete Burchell, a fanatical puritan, and perhaps insane, conceiving that Sir Christopher Hatton was an enemy to true religion, determined to assassinate him. But by mistake he wounded instead a famous seaman, Captain Hawkins. For this ordinary crime, the queen could hardly be prevented from directing him to be tried instantly by martial law. Her council, however (and this it is important to observe), resisted this illegal proposition with spirit and success.[389] We have indeed a proclamation some years afterwards, declaring that such as brought into the kingdom or dispersed papal bulls, or traitorous libels against the queen, should with all severity be proceeded against by her majesty's lieutenants or their deputies, by martial law, and suffer such pains and penalties as they should inflict; and that none of her said lieutenants or their deputies be any wise impeached, in body, lands, or goods, at any time hereafter, for anything to be done or executed in the punishment of any such offender, according to the said martial law, and the tenor of this proclamation, any law or statute to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding.[390] This measure, though by no means constitutional, finds an apology in the circumstances of the time. It bears date the 1st of July 1588, when within the lapse of a few days the vast armament of Spain might effect a landing upon our coasts; and prospectively to a crisis, when the nation, struggling for life against an invader's grasp, could not afford the protection of law to domestic traitors. But it is an unhappy consequence of all deviations from the even course of law, that the forced acts of over-ruling necessity come to be distorted into precedents to serve the purposes of arbitrary power.