This was a fault in criminal procedure which persisted until at least the end of the seventeenth century and exercised a supreme influence upon the course of justice. Grave attention and decisive weight was given to evidence which in modern times would not be allowed to come into court at all. The most irrelevant detail was freely admitted against the prisoner. At Raleigh’s trial in 1603 one Dyer, a pilot, swore that when he was at Lisbon he had accidentally met a man who said that Cobham and Raleigh would cut King James’ throat before he could be crowned.[524] Evidence of a still more remarkable character was given at the trial of Benjamin Faulconer for perjury in 1653. After the charge had been proved, witnesses were called to testify to a variety of facts startlingly unconnected with the case. They swore that the prisoner had been guilty of using bad language, that he had drunk the devil’s health in the streets of Petersfield, and that he had “a common name for a robber on the highway.”[525] All this was allowed as good evidence to raise a presumption of his guilt. Instances of the lax rules of evidence in force might be multiplied. At Hulet’s trial for having been executioner of Charles I witnesses were admitted for the defence to testify that they had heard Brandon, the hangman, say that he had himself cut off the king’s head. On the other hand the evidence for the prosecution chiefly consisted of the testimony of persons who swore that they had heard Hulet admit the truth of the charge.[526] The trial of Hawkins for theft before Sir Matthew Hale in 1669 is still more notable. Not only was evidence allowed to prove for the prosecution that Hawkins had committed, and for the defence that he had not committed, two other thefts wholly unconnected with the case before the court,[527] but the prisoner, who was a country parson, was permitted to produce a certificate signed by over a hundred of his parishioners, to the effect that the prosecutor was “a notorious Anabaptist, an enemy to the Church of England, and a perfect hater of all ministers of the same, but in particular most inveterate and malicious against Robert Hawkins, clerk, late minister of the church of Chilton,” and going on to express their belief in the innocence of Hawkins and the dishonesty of the prosecutor.[528]