stage was reached, men thought otherwise. In the seventeenth century society and government were unstable and liable to sudden shocks. A comparatively trifling event might set the balance against the reign of law and order, and consequently the law meted out hard measure to those who came into contact with it. As soon as the accused was committed for trial he was sent to close confinement, from which he did not emerge until he was brought to the bar. Unless by extraordinary favour, he was allowed neither counsel nor solicitor to assist in the preparation of his defence. He was not allowed to see his witnesses before they came into court.[549] All the papers which he wrote in prison were taken from him.[550] The utmost he might claim was that one of his friends should visit him in order to summon the proper witnesses for his defence. Even these interviews, in any case of importance, could be held only in the presence of the jailor, that the prisoner might be cut off from all means of illicit intercourse with the outer world,[551] a precaution which was justified by the fact that, when all possible care had been taken, prisoners still found means underhand to receive communications which would have been prizes of considerable value to the government if they had been intercepted.[552] The age which knew the penal laws as active measures of administration, which was divided from the tragedy at Fotheringay by less than a hundred years and from the Gunpowder Plot by scarcely more than the span of a man’s life, which had only recovered from the successive shocks of revolution and restoration to wait expectantly for the day when rebellion would have to be met once again, and on which within the ten ensuing years did burst another rebellion and a second revolution, could hardly be expected to rate the safety of society more lightly than the life of one who, at the best, was surrounded by incriminating circumstances. Even so late and well-ordered a man as Paley believed that it was better for the innocent to die than for the guilty to go free.[553] CHAPTER III TRIALS FOR THE PLOT