In particular matters of law counsel might be assigned to argue such points as the court thought fit, but only when they had been proposed to the court by the prisoner himself.[539] When Colledge at his trial for high treason retorted that without the aid of counsel he could not tell what points to submit for argument, he was told by the Attorney-General that ignorance of the law was an excuse for no man.[540] In countless ways the system worked, in accordance with the tradition of many years, in favour of the king and in glaring disfavour of the prisoner. Peculiar cruelty on the part of the judges has continually been assumed as an explanation of this. In reality recourse need be had to no such hypothesis. The judges handled the means which had come down to them as legitimate, without necessarily indulging the rare vice of spontaneous inhumanity which has been attributed to them by historians. They did their work and performed their duty as it came in their way; and the work of a judge in state trials in the seventeenth century was to modern eyes neither dignified nor pleasant. Nor, although their names are linked to no distinction in the annals of the law, were the judges, whose patents ran “during the good pleasure” of King Charles II, men devoid of talent. Lawyers were raised to the bench by influence at court, since all offices of state were to be obtained by favouritism; but their appointments were seldom devoid of some foundation of solid attainments. Some, like Scroggs, were by nature brilliant; others, like North and Pemberton, had grounded their fortunes on many years of laborious industry.[541] Such men, whose minds were not bent to reverence of the law by severe learning in it, were likely to be influenced by their position as lawyers less than by that as officers of state, and to regard their oaths as constraining them rather to the service of the crown than to an absolute pursuit of justice. Sometimes the rules under which they worked themselves prevented them from doing right to prisoners. They were unable, for instance, to summon or to protect witnesses for the defence, for their power ended with the confines of the court. When Colonel Turner on his trial in 1664 told the bench that his witnesses had sent him word that they did not dare to come without an order, the Chief Justice replied, “When witnesses come against the king, we cannot put them to their oaths, much less precept them to come.”[542] At the trial of Langhorn, the Roman Catholic lawyer, for the Popish Plot, Lord Castlemaine complained to the court that the prisoner’s witnesses were being threatened and assaulted by the mob outside and dared not “come to give their evidence for fear of being killed.” The judges were indignant and declaimed loudly against the “very horrid thing,” but they were powerless to do more than to threaten the offenders with severe punishment, if the earl could produce or point to them. As this