It cannot be ascertained how the new measure originated, but we may be sure that Government would not leave it to be dealt with by any private person. It formed part of a manifold scheme which must have had a single origin. The practice of holding Cabinet meetings--long regarded with jealousy by pedantic Constitutionalists--had commenced in the reign of Charles I. That businesslike and hard-working Monarch had, from time to time, drawn around him a few select members of his Privy Council, whom he assembled in his _Cabinet_, as it was called; and it appears that sometimes they had been obliged to register his absolute decrees, rather than by their advice to control his headstrong career. Charles II., idle and dissolute--in that respect the opposite of his father--held meetings of the same description, not that he might guide the helm, but often that he might sit on the quarter-deck, and laugh and joke with the officers, whilst they managed the ship very much as they pleased. The proposal of a new Law of Uniformity probably was made and discussed at one of these private conferences; and it also seems probable, that the proposal emanated from Lord Clarendon, who was, to all intents, Prime Minister. [Sidenote: 1661.] In connection with the appointment of the Committee, the House recommended that the preparation of the Bill should be entrusted to the care of Serjeant Keeling. He had been engaged as Junior Counsel for the Crown on the trial of the Regicides, in 1660; and for his activity and zeal on that occasion, had attained to the distinction of the coif. He was subsequently entrusted with the prosecution of Hacker, Colonel of the Guard at the execution of Charles I. After the new Bill of Uniformity had passed, he conducted the prosecution of Sir Henry Vane, in 1662; and on each of these occasions approved himself to the ruling party, and especially to Clarendon, as a useful instrument. Created a puisne Judge in 1663, he subsequently rose to a Chief Justiceship, over the head of Sir Matthew Hale; and whilst on the bench manifested his devotedness to the Church, by fining a jury one hundred marks each, for acquitting a few poor people, who assembled on Sunday with Bibles without Prayer-books. He was a violent man, and had the character of being more fit to charge Roundheads under Prince Rupert, than to charge juries from the bench of justice.[266] When, at length, his arbitrary proceedings and a contemptuous allusion which he made to Magna Charta, brought him under the notice of Parliament, he escaped its condemnation, only by an act of obsequious submission.