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Edward, attended by his former servant Alick Polwarth, who had reentered his service at Edinburgh, reached Carlisle while the commission of Oyer and Terminer on his unfortunate associates was yet sitting. He had pushed forward in haste, not, alas! with the most distant hope of saving Fergus, but to see him for the last time.
Two remarkable incidents marked the reign of Edward III. in connection with the City of London; the Lord Mayor was now constituted, by royal charter, one of the judges of oyer and terminer and gaol-delivery at Newgate. The ancient trading gilds also became developed into the present livery companies, so called, because a peculiar uniform was chosen by each.
Torrey seems to be of opinion, that the Court of Oyer and Terminer should go on, regulating any thing that may have been amiss, when certainly found to be so." Sewall and Stoughton were among the principal friends of Torrey; and he, probably, had learned from them, Phips's avowed purpose to stop the proceedings of the Court, in the witchcraft matter.
A court of oyer and terminer was immediately instituted by ordinance, and the positive, overbearing Stoughton was appointed by the governor and council as its chief judge, with Sewall and Wait Winthrop, two feebler men, as his associates. By the second of June, the court was in session at Salem, making its experiment on Bridget Bishop, a poor and friendless old woman.
Her friends turned the tables by indicting Stearne and some forty others of conspiracy, and apparently succeeded in driving them from the county. In Bury the forces of the opposition had appealed to Parliament, and the Commission of Oyer and Terminer, which, it will be noticed, is never mentioned by the witchfinders, was sent out to limit their activities.
The proceedings, however, were not warranted by legal practice, for according to statutes of the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth years of Henry VIII., pirates might not be tried in an Admiralty Court, but only under the Common Law of England by a Commission of Oyer and Terminer under the great seal.
Then the vast swindles which now, from time to time, disgrace our cities, will be unheard of. No voting of public money that, on its way to some city improvement, falls into the pockets of those who voted it. No courts of Oyer and Terminer, at vast expense to the people. No empanelling of juries to inquire into theft, arson, murder, slander, and black-mail.
These judges of the circuit, however, never obtained an ordinary jurisdiction, but continued, on every occasion, to derive their authority from two special commissions: that of oyer and terminer, by which they were appointed to hear and determine all treasons, felonies and misdemeanors, within certain districts; and that of gaol delivery, by which they were directed to try every prisoner confined in the gaols of the several towns falling under their inspection."
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