blies, to the number of twelve. II. Appearing armed, or hunting in disguise. III. Threatening, or demanding any valuable thing, by letter.-All these are felonies, without clergy. IV. Destroying of turnpikes, &c. Penalties: whipping; imprisonment; judgment of felony, with and without clergy: V. Affrays. VI. Riots, routs, and unlawful assemblies. VII. Tumultuous petitioning. VIII. Forcible entry and detainer.-Penalty, in all four: fine, and imprisonment. IX. Going unusually armed. Penalty forfeiture of arms, and imprisonment. X. Spreading false news. Penalty: fine, and imprisonment. XI. Pretended prophecies. Penalties; fine; imprisonment; and forfeiture. XII. Challenges to fight. Penalty: fine, imprisonment, and sometimes forfeiture. XIII. Libels. Penalty: fine, imprisonment, and corporal punishment. Page 142-153 CHAPTER XII. OF OFFENCES AGAINST PUBLIC TRADE. 1. OFFENCES, against the public trade, are, I. Owling. Penalties fines; forfeiture; imprisonment; loss of left hand; transportation; judgment of felony. II. Smuggling. Penalties: fines; loss of goods; judgment of felony, without clergy. III. Fraudulent bankruptcy. Penalty: judgment of felony, without clergy. IV. Usury. Penalty: fine, and imprisonment. V. Cheating. Penalties: fine; imprisonment; pillory: tumbrel; whipping, or other corporal punishment; transportation. VI. Forestalling. VII. Regrating. VIII. Engrossing.-Penalties, for all three: loss of goods; fine; imprisonment; pillory. IX. Monopolies, and combinations to raise the price of commodities. Penalties: fines; imprisonment; pillory; loss of ear; infamy; and, sometimes, the pains of præmunire. X. Exercising a trade, not having served as apprentice. Penalty: fine. XI. Transporting, or residing abroad, of artificers. Penalties: fine; imprisonment; forfeiture; incapacity; becoming aliens. 154-160 CHAPTER XIII. OF OFFENCES AGAINST THE PUBLIC HEALTH, AND THE PUBLIC POLICE OR ECONOMY. 1. OFFENCES, against the public health, are, I. Irregularity, in time of the plague, or of quarantine. Penalties: whipping; judgment of felony, with and without clergy. II. Selling unwholesome provisions. Penalties: amercement; pillory; fine; imprisonment; abjuration of the town. 161-2 2. Offences, against the public police and economy, or do mestic order of the kingdom, are, I. Those relating to clandestine and irregular marriages. Penalties: judgment of felony, with and without clergy. II. Bigamy, or (more properly) polygamy. Penalty: judgment of felony. III. Wandering, by soldiers or mariners. IV. Remaining in England, by Egyptians; or being in their fellowship one month. Both these are felonies, without clergy. V. Common nuisances: 1st, by annoyances or purprestures in highways, bridges, and rivers; 2ndly, by offensive trades and manufactures; 3rdly, by disorderly houses; 4thly, by lotteries; 5thly, by cottages; 6thly, by fireworks; 7thly, by evesdropping.-Penalty, in all: fine. 8thly, by common scolding. Penalty: the cucking stool. VI. Idleness, disorder, vagrancy, and incorrigible roguery. Penalties; imprisonment; whipping; judgment of felony. VII. Luxury, in diet. Penalty: discretionary. VIII. Gaming. Penalties: to gentlemen, fines; to others, fine and imprisonment; to cheating gamesters, fine, infamy, and the corporal pains of perjury. IX. Destroying the game. Penalties: fines; and corporal punishment. 162-175 CHAPTER XIV. OF HOMICIDE. 1. CRIMES, especially affecting individuals, are, I. Against their persons. Against their habitations. III. Against their property. 176 2. Crimes against the persons of individuals, are, i. By homicide, or destroying life. II. By other corporal injuries. 177 3. Homicide is, I. Justifiable. II. Excusable. III. Felonious. 178 Homicide is justifiable, I. By necessity, and command of law. II. By permission of law: 1st, for the furtherance of public justice; 2ndly, for prevention of some forcible felony. 178 5. Homicide is excusable, I. Per infortunium, or by mis-adventure. II. Se defendendo, or in self-defence, by chance-medley. Penalty, in both: forfeiture of goods; which however is pardoned of course. 182 6. Felonious homicide is the killing of a human creature, without justification or excuse. This is, I. Killing one's self. II. Killing another. 188 7. Killing one's self, or self-murder, is where one deliberately, or by any unlawful malicious act, puts an end to his own life. This is felony; punished by ignominious burial, and forfeiture of goods and chattels. 189 8. Killing another is, I. Manslaughter. II. Murder. 190 9. Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of another; without malice, express or implied. This is either, I. Voluntary, upon a sudden heat. II. Învoluntary, in the commission of some unlawful act. Both are felony, but within clergy; except in the case of stabbing. Page 191 10. Murder is when a person, of sound memory and discretion, unlawfully killeth any reasonable creature, in being, and under the king's peace; with malice aforethought, either express or implied. This is felony, without clergy; punished with speedy death, and hanging in chains, or dissection. 194 11. Petit treason, (being an aggravated degree of murder), is where the servant kills his master, the wife her husband, or the ecclesiastic his superior. Penalty: in men, to be drawn, and hanged; in women, to be drawn, and burned. 203 CHAPTER XV. OF OFFENCES AGAINST THE PERSONS OF INDIVIDUALS. 1. CRIMES affecting the persons of individuals, by other corporal injuries not amounting to homicide, are, I. Mayhem; and also shooting at another. Penalties: fine; imprisonment; judgment of felony, without clergy. II. Forcible abduction, and marriage, or defilement of an heiress; which is felony: also stealing, and deflowering or marrying, any woman-child under the age of sixteen years; for which the penalty is imprisonment, fine, and temporary forfeiture of her lands. III. Rape; and also carnal knowledge of a woman-child under the age of ten years. IV. Sodomy, with man or beast.-Both these are felonies, without clergy. V. Assault. VI. Battery; especially of clergymen. VII. Wounding. Penalties, in all three: fine; imprisonment; and other corporal punishment. VIII. False imprisonment. Penalties: fine: imprisonment; and (in some atrocious cases) the pains of præmunire, and incapacity of office or pardon. IX. Kidnapping, or, forcibly stealing away the king's subjects. Penalty: fine; imprisonment; and pillory. 205-219 CHAPTER XVI. OF OFFENCES AGAINST THE HABITATIONS OF INDIVIDUALS. 1. CRIMES, affecting the habitations of individuals, are, I. Arson. II. Burglary. 220 2. Arson is the malicious and wilful burning of the house, or outhouse, of another man. This is felony; in some cases within, in others without clergy. 220 3. Burglary is the breaking and entering, by night, into a man sion-house; with intent to commit a felony. This is felony, without clergy. Page 222 CHAPTER XVII. OF OFFENCES AGAINST PRIVATE PROPERTY. 1. CRIMES, affecting the private property of individuals, are, 1. Larceny. II. Malicious mischief. III. Forgery. 2. Larceny is, I. Simple. II. Mixed, or compound. 229 229 3. Simple larceny is the felonious taking, and carrying away, of the personal goods of another. And it is, I. Grand larceny; being above the value of twelve pence. Which is felony; in some cases within, in others without, clergy. II. Petit larceny; to the value of twelve pence or under. Which is also felony, but not capital; being punished with whipping, or transportation. 229 4. Mixed, or compound, larceny, is that wherein the taking is accompanied with the aggravation of being, I. From the house. II. From the person. 239 5. Larcenies from the house, by day or night, are felonies without clergy, when they are, I. Larcenies, above twelve pence, from a church;-or by breaking a tent or booth in a market or fair, by day or night, the owner or his family being therein;or by breaking a dwelling-house by day, any person being therein; or from a dwelling-house by day, without breaking, any person therein being put in fear;-or from a dwelling-house by night, without breaking, the owner or his family being therein, and put in fear. II. Larcenics, of five shillings, by breaking the dwelling-house, shop, or warehouse, by day, though no person be therein; or, by privately stealing in any shop, warehouse, coach-house, or stable, by day or night, without breaking, and though no person be therein. III. Larcenies, of forty-shillings, from a dwelling-house or its out-houses, without breaking, and though no person be therein. 239 6. Larceny from the person is, I. By privately stealing, from the person of another, above the value of twelve pence. II. By robbery; or the felonious and forcible taking, from the person of another, goods or money of any value, by putting him in fear. These are both felonies without clergy. An attempt to rob is also felony. 241 7. Malicious mischief, by destroying dikes, goods, cattle, ships, garments, fish-ponds, trees, woods, churches, chapels, meetinghouses, houses, out-houses, corn, hay, straw, sea or river banks, hop-binds, coal-mines, (or engines thereunto belonging), or any fences for inclosures by act of Parliament, is felony, and, in most cases, without benefit of clergy. 243 8. Forgery is the fraudulent making or alteration of a writing, in prejudice of another's right. Penalties: fine; imprisonment; pillory; loss of nose and ears; forfeiture; judgment of felony, without clergy. Page 247 CHAPTER XVIII. OF THE MEANS OF PREVENTING OFFENCES. 1. CRIMES and misdemesnors may be prevented, by compeling suspected persons to give security: which is effected by binding them in a conditional recognizance to the king, taken in court, or by a magistrate out of court. 251 2. These recognizances may be conditioned, I. To keep the peace. II. To be of the good behaviour. 252 3. They may be taken by any justice or conservator of the peace, at his own discretion: or, at the request of such as are entitled to demand the same. 253 4. All persons, who have given sufficient cause to apprehend an intended breach of the peace, may be bound over to keep the peace; and all those that be not of good fame, may be bound to the good behaviour: and may, upon refusal in either case, be committed to gaol. 256 CHAPTER XIX. OF COURTS OF A CRIMINAL JURISDICTION. 1. In the method of punishment may be considered, I. The several courts of criminal jurisdiction. II. The several proceedings therein. 258 2. The criminal courts are, I. Those of a public and general jurisdiction throughout the realm. II. Those of a private and special jurisdiction. 258 3. Public criminal courts, are, I. The high court of parliament; which proceeds by impeachment. II. The court of the lord high steward; and the court of the king in full parliament: for the trial of capitally indicted peers. III. The court of King's Bench. IV. The court of chivalry. V. The court of admiralty, under the king's commission. VI. The courts of oyer and terminer and general gaol-delivery. VII. The court of quartersessions of the peace. VIII. The sheriff's tourn. IX. The court leet. X. The court of the coroner. XI. The court of the clerk of the market. 258-275 4. Private criminal courts are, I. The court of the lord steward, &c. by statute of Henry VII. II. The court of the lord |