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causes of freehold; and also all criminal offences or misdemeanors, under the degree of treason, felony, or mayhem. The prohibition of meddling with freehold still continues: but the trial of treason, felony, and mayhem, by a particular charter, is committed to the university jurisdiction in another court, namely, the court of the lord high steward of the university. When therefore an indictment is found at the assizes, or elsewhere, against any scholar of the university, or other prileged person, the vice-chancellor may claim the cognizance of it; and (when claimed in due time and manner) it ought to be allowed him by the judges of assize. When the cognizance is so allowed, if the offence be inter minora crimina, or a misdemeanor only, it is tried in the chancellor's court by the ordinary judge. But if it be for treason, felony, or mayhem, it is then, and then only, to be determined before the high steward, under the king's special commission to try the same. The process of the trial is this: The high steward issues one precept to the sheriff of the county, who thereupon returns a panel of eighteen freeholders; and another precept to the beadles of the university, who thereupon return a panel of eighteen matriculated laymen, "laicos privilegio universitatis gaudentes" and by a jury formed de medietate, half of freeholders, and half of matriculated persons, is the indictment to be tried; and that in the guildhall of the city of Oxford. And if execution be necessary to be awarded, in consequence of finding the party guilty, the sheriff of the county

must execute the university process; to which he is annually bound by an oath.

CHAPTER XX.

OF SUMMARY CONVICTIONS.

WE are next, according to the plan I have laid down, to take into consideration the proceedings in the courts of criminal jurisdiction, in order to the punishment of offences. These are plain, easy, and regular; the law not admitting any fictions, as in civil causes, to take place where the life, the liberty, and the safety of the subject are more immediately brought into jeopardy. And these proceedings are divisible into two kinds; summary and regular.

By a summary proceeding I mean principally such as is directed by several acts of parliament for the conviction of offenders, and the inflicting of certain penalties created by those acts of parliament. In these there is no intervention of a jury, but the party accused is acquitted or condemned by the suffrage of such person only, as the statute has appointed for his judge.

I. Of this summary nature are all trials of offences ánd frauds contrary to the laws of the excise, and other branches of the revenue: which are to be inquired into and determined by the commissioners of the respective departments, or by justices of the

peace in the country; officers, who are all of them appointed and removable at the discretion of the

crown.

II. Another branch of summary proceedings is that before justices of the peace, in order to inflict divers petty pecuniary mulets, and corporal penalties, denounced by act of parliament for many disorderly offences; such as common swearing, drunkenness, vagrancy, idleness, and a vast variety of others. The process of these summary convictions, it must be owned, is extremely speedy; though the courts of common law have thrown in one check upon them, by making it necessary to summon the party accused before he is condemned. This is now held to be an indispensable requisite. After this summons, the magistrate, in summary proceedings, may go on to examine one or more witnesses, as the statute may require, upon oath ; and then make his conviction of the offender, in writing upon which he usually issues his warrant, either to apprehend the offender, in case corporal punishment is to be inflicted on him; or else to levy the penalty incurred, by distress and sale of his goods.

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III. To this head, of summary proceedings, may also be properly referred the method, immemorially used by the superior courts of justice, of punishing contempts by attachment, and the subsequent proceedings thereon.

The contempts, that are thus punished, are either direct, which openly insult, or resist the powers of the courts, or the persons of the judges

who preside there; or else are consequential, which (without such gross insolence or direct opposition) plainly tend to create a universal disregard of their authority. The principal instances, of either sort, that have been usually punished by attachment, are chiefly of the following kinds. 1. Those committed by inferior judges and magistrates: by acting unjustly, oppressively, or irregularly, in administering those portions of justice which are intrusted to their distribution; or by disobeying the king's writs issuing out of the superior courts, by proceeding in a cause after it is put a stop to or removed by writ of prohibition, certiorari, error, supersedeas, and the like. 2. Those committed by sheriffs, bailiffs, and gaolers, and other officers of the court: by abusing the process of the law, or deceiving the parties, by any acts of oppression, extortion, collusive behaviour, or culpable neglect of duty. 3. Those committed by attorneys and solicitors, who are also officers of the respective courts: by gross instances of fraud and corruption, injustice to their clients, or other dishonest practice. 4. Those committed by jurymen, in collateral matters relating to the discharge of their office: such as making default, when summoned; refusing to be sworn, or to give any verdict; eating or drinking without the leave of the court, and especially at the cost of either party. 5. Those committed by witnesses: by making default when summoned, refusing to be sworn or examined, or prevaricating in their evidence when sworn. 6. Those committed by parties to any suit or proceeding before the court: as

by disobedience to any rule or order, made in the progress of a cause; by non-payment of costs awarded by the court upon a motion; or by nonobservance of awards duly made by arbitrators or umpires, after having entered into a rule for submitting to such determination. Therefore obedience to any rule of court may also by statute 10 Geo. III. c. 50. be enforced against any person having privilege of parliament by the process of distress infinite. 7. Those committed by any other persons, under the degree of a peer: and even by peers themselves, when enormous and accompanied by violence, such as forcible rescous and the like; or when they import a disobedience to the king's great prerogative writs, of prohibition, habeas corpus, and the rest. Some of these contempts may arise in the face of the court; as by rude and contumelious behaviour; by obstinacy, perverseness, or prevarication; by breach of the peace, or any wilful disturbance whatever others in the absence of the party; as by disobeying or treating with disrespect the king's writ, or the rules or process of the court; by perverting such writ or process to the purposes of private malice, extortion, or injustice; by speaking or writing contemptuously of the court, or judges, acting in their judicial capacity; by printing false accounts (or even true ones without proper permission) of causes then depending in judgment; and by any thing in short that demonstrates a gross want of that regard and respect, which when once courts of justice are deprived of, their authority (so

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