_Prosecutions of Eliot and others for conduct in parliament._--The king next turned his mind, according to his own and his father's practice, to take vengeance on those who had been most active in their opposition to him. A few days after the dissolution, Sir John Eliot, Holles, Selden, Long, Strode, and other eminent members of the Commons, were committed, some to the Tower, some to the King's Bench, and their papers seized. Upon suing for their habeas corpus, a return was made that they were detained for notable contempts, and for stirring up sedition, alleged in a warrant under the king's sign manual. Their counsel argued against the sufficiency of this return, as well on the principles and precedents employed in the former case of Sir Thomas Darnel and his colleagues, as on the late explicit confirmation of them in the Petition of Right. The king's counsel endeavoured, by evading the authority of that enactment, to set up anew that alarming pretence to a power of arbitrary imprisonment, which the late parliament had meant to silence for ever. "A petition in parliament," said the attorney-general Heath, "is no law, yet it is for the honour and dignity of the king to observe it faithfully; but it is the duty of the people not to stretch it beyond the words and intention of the king. And no other construction can be made of the petition, than that it is a confirmation of the ancient liberties and rights of the subjects. So that now the case remains in the same quality and degree as it was before the petition." Thus, by dint of a sophism which turned into ridicule the whole proceedings of the late parliament, he pretended to recite afresh the authorities on which he had formerly relied, in order to prove that one committed by the command of the king or privy council is not bailable. The judges, timid and servile, yet desirous to keep some measures with their own consciences, or looking forward to the wrath of future parliaments, wrote what Whitelock calls "a humble and stout letter" to the king, that they were bound to bail the prisoners; but requested that he would send his direction to do so.[3] The gentlemen in custody were, on this intimation, removed to the Tower; and the king, in a letter to the court, refused permission for them to appear on the day when judgment was to be given. Their restraint was thus protracted through the long vacation; towards the close of which, Charles, sending for two of the judges told them he was content the prisoners should be bailed, notwithstanding their obstinacy in refusing to present a petition, declaring their sorrow for having offended him. In the ensuing Michaelmas term accordingly they were brought before the court, and ordered not only to find bail for the present charge, but sureties for their good behaviour. On refusing to comply with this requisition, they were remanded to custody.