Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 120

In the sixteenth century examples are to be found of various prerogative courts undertaking to punish jurymen who found verdicts manifestly against the evidence.² In an age when political trials were becoming more frequent, it became a serious matter that verdicts could be set aside and jurors punished in courts which were really a disguised form of the Council. In Crompton’s treatise on the jurisdiction of courts (1594) we read:

“Note that the London jury which acquitted Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, Knight, about the first year of Queen Mary, of high treason, was called into the Star Chamber in October, 1544 (sic), forasmuch as the matter was held to have been sufficiently proved against him; and eight of them were there fined in great sums, at least five hundred pounds each, and remanded back to prison to dwell there until further order were taken for their punishment. The other four were released, because they submitted and confessed that they had offended in not considering the truth of the matter.

“See also eleven jurymen who acquitted one Hodie of felony before Sir Roger Manwood, Chief Baron, on circuit in Somersetshire, against obvious evidence, were fined in the Star Chamber and made to wear papers in Westminster Hall about 1580; and I saw them.

“Note that one G. wrote a letter to a juryman who was about to sit on a case between Lane and O. D., requesting him to follow his conscience according to the evidence; he was fined here twenty pounds because it was not his business, about 1585. Note this, that one ought not to meddle with any matter pending in suit which is not one’s own business.”¹

Throckmorton’s prominent share in Wyatt’s rebellion put his guilt beyond the slightest question, but he was a protestant hero to the Londoners, and the jury’s verdict was purely political. From now onwards the jury enters on a new phase of its history, and for the next three centuries it will exercise its power of veto on the use of the criminal law against political offenders who have succeeded in obtaining popular sympathy.