54

HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

CHAP.

XIV.

11189.

sequences which might follow if so bad a man were capable ofbeing a witness. “There is only one waysaid the Lord Pre-sident, “in which I can consent to reverse the fellow’s sentence.He has been whipped from Aldgate to Tyburn. He ought to bewhipped from Tyburn back to Aldgate.” The question was put.Twenty three peers voted for reversing the judgment; thirty-five for affirming it.*

This decision produced a great sensation, and not withoutreason. A question was now raised which might justly excitethe anxiety of every man in the kingdom. That question waswhether the highest tribunal, the tribunal on which, in thelast resort, depended the most precious interests of everyEnglish subject, was at liberty to decide judicial questions onother than judicial grounds, and to withhold from a suitor whatwas admitted to be his legal right, on account of the depravityof his moral character. That the supreme Court of Appealought not to he suffered to exercise arbitrary power, under theforms of ordinary justice, was strongly felt by the ablest men inthe House of Commons, and by none more strongly than bySomers. With him, and with those who reasoned like him,were, on this occasion, allied many weak and hot-headedzealots who still regarded Oates as a public benefactor, andwho imagined that to question the existence of the Popish plotwas to question the truth of the Protestant religion. On thevery morning after the decision of the Peers had been pro-nounced, keen reflections were thrown, in the House of Com-mons, on the justice of their lordships. Three days later, thesubject was brought forward by a Whig Privy Councillor, SirRobert Hoxvard, member for Castle Rising. He was one of theBerkshire branch of his noble family, a branch which enjoyed,in that age, the unenviable distinction of being wonderfully

* Lords' Journals, May 31. 1689; Commons' Journals, Aug. 2.; North’sExamen, 224; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

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