[370] The apprehension of this compliant spirit in the ministers of justice led to an excellent act in 2 E. III. c. 8, that the judges shall not omit to do right for any command under the great or privy seal. And the conduct of Richard II., who sought absolute power by corrupting or intimidating them, produced another statute in the eleventh year of his reign (c. 10), providing that neither letters of the king's signet nor of the privy seal should from thenceforth be sent in disturbance of the law. An ordinance of Charles V., king of France, in 1369, directs the parliament of Paris to pay no regard to any letters under his seal suspending the course of legal procedure, but to consider them as surreptitiously obtained. Villaret, t. x. p. 175. This ordinance, which was sedulously observed, tended very much to confirm the independence and integrity of that tribunal. [371] Cotton's Posthuma, p. 221. Howell's State Trials, vol. iii. p. 1. Hume quotes a grant of the office of constable to the earl of Rivers in 7 E. IV., and infers, unwarrantably enough, that "its authority was in direct contradiction to Magna Charta; and it is evident that no regular liberty could subsist with it. It involved a full dictatorial power, continually subsisting in the state." Hist. of England, c. 22. But by the very words of this patent the jurisdiction given was only over such causes quæ in curiâ constabularii Angliæ ab antiquo, viz. tempore dicti Gulielmi conquæstoris, seu aliquo tempore citra, tractari, audiri, examinari, aut decidi consueverunt aut _jure debuerant aut debent_. These are expressed, though not very perspicuously, in the statute 13 R. II. c. 2, that declares the constable's jurisdiction. And the chief criminal matter reserved by law to the court of this officer was treason committed out of the kingdom. In violent and revolutionary seasons, such as the commencement of Edward IV.'s reign, some persons were tried by martial law before the constable. But, in general, the exercise of criminal justice by this tribunal, though one of the abuses of the times, cannot be said to warrant the strong language adopted by Hume. [372] Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Angliæ, c. 9. [373] Id. c. 13. [374] The latter treatise having been written under Edward IV., whom Fortescue, as a restored Lancastrian, would be anxious not to offend, and whom in fact he took some pains to conciliate both in this and other writings, it is evident that the principles of limited monarchy were as fully recognised in his reign whatever particular acts of violence might occur, as they had been under the Lancastrian princes.