_Habeas corpus act passed._--I have already pointed out to the reader's notice that article of Clarendon's impeachment which charges him with having caused many persons to be imprisoned against law.[18] These were released by the Duke of Buckingham's administration, which in several respects acted on a more liberal principle than any other in this reign. The practice was not however wholly discontinued. Jenkes, a citizen of London on the popular or factious side, having been committed by the king in council for a mutinous speech in Guildhall, the justices at quarter sessions refused to admit him to bail, on pretence that he had been committed by a superior court; or to try him, because he was not entered in the calendar of prisoners. The chancellor, on application for a habeas corpus, declined to issue it during the vacation; and the chief justice of the king's bench, to whom, in the next place, the friends of Jenkes had recourse, made so many difficulties that he lay in prison for several weeks.[19] This has been commonly said to have produced the famous act of habeas corpus. But this is not truly stated. The arbitrary proceedings of Lord Clarendon were what really gave rise to it. A bill to prevent the refusal of the writ of habeas corpus was brought into the house on April 10, 1668, but did not pass the committee in that session.[20] But another to the same purpose, probably more remedial, was sent up to the Lords in March 1669-70.[21] It failed of success in the upper house; but the Commons continued to repeat their struggle for this important measure, and in the session of 1673-4 passed two bills, one to prevent the imprisonment of the subject in gaols beyond the seas, another to give a more expeditious use of the writ of habeas corpus in criminal matters.[22] The same or similar bills appear to have gone up to the Lords in 1675. It was not till 1676 that the delay of Jenkes's habeas corpus took place. And this affair seems to have had so trifling an influence that these bills were not revived for the next two years, notwithstanding the tempests that agitated the house during that period.[23] But in the short parliament of 1679, they appear to have been consolidated into one, that having met with better success among the Lords, passed into a statute, and is generally denominated the habeas corpus act.[24]