under usurped power falls not on the English people, but on its natural leaders. We have seen, indeed, that the House of Commons now and then gave signs of an independent spirit, and occasioned more trouble, even to Henry VIII., than his compliant nobility. They yielded to every mandate of his imperious will; they bent with every breath of his capricious humour; they are responsible for the illegal trial, for the iniquitous attainder, for the sanguinary statute, for the tyranny which they sanctioned by law, and for that which they permitted to subsist without law. Nor was this selfish and pusillanimous subserviency more characteristic of the minions of Henry's favour, the Cromwells, the Riches, the Pagets, the Russells, and the Powletts, than of the representatives of ancient and honourable houses, the Norfolks, the Arundels, and the Shrewsburies. We trace the noble statesmen of those reigns concurring in all the inconsistencies of their revolutions, supporting all the religions of Henry, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth; adjudging the death of Somerset to gratify Northumberland, and of Northumberland to redeem their participation in his fault, setting up the usurpation of Lady Jane, and abandoning her on the first doubt of success, constant only in the rapacious acquisition of estates and honours from whatever source, and in adherence to the present power. _Jurisdiction of the council of star-chamber._--I have noticed in a former work that illegal and arbitrary jurisdiction exercised by the council, which, in despite of several positive statutes, continued in a greater or less degree through all the period of the Plantagenet family, to deprive the subject, in many criminal charges, of that sacred privilege, trial by his peers.[72] This usurped jurisdiction, carried much farther and exercised more vigorously, was the principal grievance under the Tudors; and the forced submission of our forefathers was chiefly owing to the terrors of a tribunal, which left them secure from no infliction but public execution, or actual dispossession of their freeholds. And, though it was beyond its direct province to pass sentence on capital charges; yet, by intimidating jurors, it procured convictions which it was not authorised to pronounce. We are naturally astonished at the easiness with which verdicts were sometimes given against persons accused of treason on evidence insufficient to support the charge in point of law, or in its nature not competent to be received, or unworthy of belief. But this is explained by the peril that hung over the jury in case of acquittal. "If," says Sir Thomas Smith, in his _Treatise on the Commonwealth of England_, "they do pronounce not guilty upon the prisoner, against whom manifest witness is brought in, the prisoner escapeth, but the twelve are not only rebuked by the judges, but also threatened of punishment, and many times commanded to appear in the star-chamber, or before the privy council, for the matter.