administer an oath to those that were ready to swear to Indictments of Subornation against the Witnesses, doth exceedingly heighten all men's jealousies. For not to debate about the legality or illegality of this procedure, being obliged till this business do either before this or a higher judicature come under a review, to acquiesce silently in the Judgement of the Court; I shall only say: That as it is the first president of this kind, so the reducing it into common practice, would prove a general obstruction of the justice of the Law. And to make the receiving of Indictments depend upon the pleasure of the Attorney General were to settle on him a more Arbitrary Power than the Laws of England have placed in the King himself._ And in another part as follows:--_And we are the more inclined to believe this whole Conspiracy wherein the Earl of Shaftsbury and other Protestants are said to be engaged against the King and the Government, is only a malicious piece of revenge upon the zealous patriots of our Religion; by considering that Justice Warcup, and Mr. David Fitzgerald, are employed to conduct and manage the detection and discovery of it._[237] A copy of the pamphlet is preserved in the British Museum Library. It is in quarto and contains 37 pages. 287. A Satire, 1680. This is a set of verses satirizing the Lord Chief Justice Scroggs, apparently very similar to those printed on p. 216, for which Jane Curtis was prosecuted. For publishing them a prosecution was instituted against John Howe, of the parish of St. Michael, Cornhill, bookseller. The information charges that the defendant, contriving and maliciously intending to bring into hatred and contempt Sir William Scroggs, Lord Chief Justice, in those things which touch him and his judicial office and the King's authority, did, on the twenty-fourth day of May, in the thirty-second year of the reign of King Charles the Second, within the parish of St. Michael, Cornhill aforesaid, get into his hands a certain false, malicious, infamous, scandalous, and odious libel intituled _A Satire_, in which libel is contained among other things as follows:--_The Judge is a base butcher's sonne_ (meaning the Lord Chief Justice.) _Most sly of nocent blood. But for ten thousand pound has done The Pope a deal of good. 'Twas he that villaine Wakeman cleared, Who was to have poysened the King, As plaine to all but twelve appeared, For which he deserves to swing._ (meaning again the Lord Chief Justice.) And that the said John Howe, knowing the aforesaid libel to be a scandalous and infamous libel, did on the said twenty-fourth day of May, publish and expose to sale the same libel, to the great scandal and contempt of the said Lord Chief Justice and the King's authority.[238] There was also a prosecution against one Enoch Procer for publishing the same.[239] 288.