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ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A39417 The Earl of Shaftsbury's grand-jury vindicated from the aspersions cast on them in the late address from some of the Middle-Temple, London 1682 (1682) Wing E81; ESTC R38854 4,076 2

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the subtilty and undue demeanour of Sheriffs by making and returning for the body of the shires at every Sessions the names of such persons who for the benefit of such Sheriffs will be wilfully forsworn at the solicitation of such Sheriffs and their ministers By reason whereof many and divers substantial persons the Kings true Subjects contrary to equity and rigbt have div●rs and many times wrongfully been Indicted of divers Murthers Felonies and other misbehaviours by their covin and falsehood to the utter undoing of their lives loss of their goods and lands By the Preamble of this Act 't is plain that this power of Reforming was given to no other intent than that the Subject might have honest Grand-Juries men of such integrity and understanding as will-neither be corrupted nor frighted into a false averment of any Indictment and thereby put the Prisoner in hazard of his life at a farther Tryal which was the only crime of which those Grand Juries so corruptly returned could be guilty for they could do no more than find the Indictment as it was brought to them and the Prisoner must afterwards come upon another Tryal and before Justices too to make his defence And yet the Statute saith these Indictments have been to the utter undoing of the lives and fortunes of divers substantial persons the Kings true Subjects especially when found o● course in that manner and form as they are sent to them which Jurors ought particularly to consider in this age where violent prosecutions are so frequent and many undone by great fines upon hasty expressions or parhaps pleased with the Libels of the age and having no other malice to the Government than reading the Witt of the Phamphlets are made the Publishers that they may be Fined to their ruine if they prove not persons of a conscience like these Gentlemen fully complying to every thing in fashion lest by a common rumour they mistake that for form which is the essential part of every Indictment and the consideration thereof absolutely necessary in their giving a Verdict because the safety or destruction of the Prisoner depends as much upon their finding his Intention as his Fact For all Indictments in capital Cases must be laid Feloniously Traiterously Maliciously Seditiously with intention to raise discord between the King and his People or in such like expressions declearing the intention of the offender The Bill thus drawn the Prosecutor looks no farther than the proving those VVords or Actions to which that malice is so affixed Now if a Jury affirms the Indictment thus formed as hath been the common course then indeed the Party is in Law supposed Guilty of all the Malice as it is there asserted not that the Law presumes the Malice as of late hath been too much insinuated into Juries but because the Jurors upon their Oaths do find the Fact committed with such Malicious Intentions for a cunning Clerk or learned Attorney General may with his additions so dress up an ordinary Trespass as to look like a formidable Treason and bring a man in question for his Life upon the most trifling offence if a wise discerning Jury shall not think fit to take off the Varnish and find the true naked fact as it shall appear to them In the great contested case of Barnardiston and the Sheriff of Suffolk if the Jury had found only a false Return and not found it to be done Maliciously and knowingly as was asserted in the Declaration who can beleive that my Lord Chief Justice Hale and his then learned brethren in the Kings-Bench would have given Judgment for the Plaintiff the knowledge and malice of the Defendant so found by the Jury was the ground of that Judgment As in the case of Pen and Mead who being Indicted for certain Trespasses and Contempts unlawful Assemblies and Tumults to the disturbance of the Peace their Intention appearing otherwise were Justly acquitted for though the Evidence was very plain that they with a great number besides were met together yet the Jurors being upon their Oaths convinced That meeting of theirs was not with any Intention to raise Tumults or disturb the Peace as was charged upon it in the Indictment could not bring them in Guilty And for want of this careful distinguishing in Juries we shall in a little time if London preserves its Charter have the Apprentices Riots in the Easter holy-days when they go to pull down a Bawdy-house made a new Treason by the only addition of the word Traiterous to this accustomed riotous offence and nothing shall for ever hereafter be a Riot although our Old Laws have known some great tumults to be no more when a vigorous Attorney General shall think fit to call it Treason LONDON Printed for R. Baldwyn 1682.