records ever since the Conquest as a totally different institution from the trial by jury. The trial per sectatores or per pares in the county court, which has sometimes been confounded with the trial by jury, was in truth a totally different tribunal. The sectatores or pares were, together with the sheriff or other president, judges of the court; and it appears to have been the common course with the Gothic nations that twelve assessors should be present with the king or judge to decide judicial controversies. (Du Cange, ' Gloss.,' ad vocem Pares.') The pares curia resembled permanent assessors of the court, like the scabini mentioned in the early laws of France and Italy, much more nearly than sworn jurors indiscriminately selected, and performing a subordinate part to the judge. On the other hand, the incidents of the mode of trial prevalent in Normandy long before the Conquest correspond in a striking manner with those of our trial by jury as it existed for centuries afterwards. Thus in Normandy offenders were convicted or absolved by an inquest of good and lawful men summoned from the neighbourhood where the offence was surmised to have been committed. The law required that those were to be selected to serve on such inquest who were best informed of the truth of the matter; and friends, enemies, and near relatives of the accused were to be excluded. So also in the Norman Writ of Right, those were to be sworn as recognitors who were born and had ever dwelt in the neighbourhood where the land in question lay, in order that it might be believed that they knew of the truth of the matter, and would speak the truth respecting it. (Grand Coustumier,' cap. 68, 69, 103.) These incidents, though unlike our present mode of trial (which, as will presently be shown, has entirely altered its character within the last four centuries), are nearly identical with the trial by jury as it is described first by Glanville and afterwards by Bracton, and correspond almost verbally with the form of the jury process, which has continued the same from very early times to the present day, by which the sheriff is commanded to return "good and lawful men of the neighbourhood, by whom the truth of the matter may be better known, and who are not akin to either party, to recognise upon their oaths," &c. On the other hand (as Madox remarks, in his History of the Exchequer,' p. 122), "if we compare the laws of the Anglo-Saxon kings with the forms of law process collected by Glanville, they are as different from one another as the laws of two several nations."

Though there are some traces of the trial by jury in the four reigns which immediately succeeded the Norman Conquest, it was not till a century afterwards, in the reign of Henry II., that this institution became fully established and was reduced to a regular system. Its introduction into frequent use at this period was probably owing to the law or ordinance for the trial by assize in pleas of land or real actions, made by Henry II. This law has not come down to our times, but it is fully described by Glanville (lib. ii. cap. 7), and the greater part of the treatise of that writer is occupied by an account of the practical machinery of the trial by twelve men, which he warmly eulogises and represents as having been introduced in opposition to the unsatisfactory mode of trial by battle or duel. In the reign of Henry II. it appears also that a jury was sometimes used in matters of a criminal nature-the proceeding in such cases being noticed as an inquiry per juratam patriæ vel vicineti, or per juramentum legalium hominum. Thus in the Constitutions of Clarendon,' enacted in 1164, it is directed that "if no person appeared to accuse an offender before the archdeacon, the sheriff should, if requested to do so by the bishop, cause twelve lawful men of the neighbourhood or of the township to be sworn, who might declare the truth according to their conscience." These however were probably accusatory juries, similar to our grand inquests, and not juries employed for the actual trial or "deliverance" of criminals, which do not seem to have been commonly used until a later period.

The law of Henry II. introduced the trial by assize or jury in real actions as a mode of deciding facts which the subject might claim as a matter of right. Glanville calls it "a certain royal benefit conferred upon the people by the clemency of the sovereign with the advice of the nobility." Accordingly we find in the 'Rotuli Curia Regis' in the time of Richard I. and John, many instances of trials by jury being claimed by parties, though it appears from these curious records that at this period the trial by battle was still in frequent use. In the reign of John we first begin to trace the use of juries for the trial of criminal accusations. At first it seems to have been procured by the accused as a special favour from the crown, a fine, or some gift or consideration, being paid in order to purchase the privilege of a trial by a jury. Several instances of this kind will be found collected in the notes and illustrations to Palgrave's Commonwealth of England,' vol. ii., p. 186. The payment of a fine took place also not unfrequently in civil cases, where any variation from the regular course was required; see 'Rotuli Curiæ Regis,' vol. i., pp. 354, 375; vol. ii., pp. 72, 92, 97, 101, 114. It is quite clear, however, from Bracton and Fleta, that at the end of the 13th century the trial by jury in criminal cases had become usual, the form of the proceedings being given by them in detail. (Bracton, p. 143.) Introduced originally as a matter of favour and indulgence, it gained ground with advancing civilisation, gradually superseding the more ancient and barbarous customs of battle, ordeal, and wager of law, until at length it became, both in civil and criminal cases, the ordinary mode of determining facts for judicial purposes.

It is right to notice the popular and remarkable error that the

stipulation for the judicium parium in Magna Charta referred to the trial by jury. Sir Edward Coke in his commentary upon Magna Charta expressly distinguishes between the trial by peers and the trial by jury (2nd Inst. 48-9); but Blackstone says, "The trial by jury is that trial by the peers of every Englishman, which, as the grand bulwark of his liberties, is secured to him by the Great Charter." (Commentaries,' vol. iv., p. 349.) This is confounding two distinct modes of trial. The judicium parium was the feudal mode of trial, where the pares or convassalli ejusdem domini sat as judges or assessors with the lord of the fee to decide controversies arising between individual pares. It was a phrase perfectly understood at the period of Magna Charta, and the mode of trial had been in use long before in France and all parts of Europe where feuds prevailed. (Du Cange, 'Gloss.', ad vocem 'Pares.') It was essentially different from the trial by jury, which could never be accurately called judicium parium. We read frequently in the records of those times (and even in Magna Charta itself), of juratores, of veredictum or juramentum legalium hominum, and jurata vicineti or patriæ, all of which expressions refer to a jury; but not a single instance can be found in any charter, or in any ancient treatise or judicial record, in which the jury are called pares, or their verdict judicium. (Reeves's History of the Law,' vol. i., p. 249.) In the records of the Curia Regis' in the first year of John's reign, among numerous entries of Ponit se super juratam vicineti or patriæ, are also entries of Ponit se super pares suos de eodem feodo, plainly indicating a distinction between the two modes of trial. (Rotuli Curia Regis,' vol. ii., p. 90.)

Until about the reign of Henry VI. the trial by jury was to all intents and purposes a trial by witnesses. The present form of the jurors' oath is that they shall "give a true verdict, according to the evidence." At what precise time this form was introduced is uncertain; but for several centuries after the Conquest, the jurors both in civil and criminal cases were sworn merely to speak the truth. (Glanville, lib. ii., cap. 17; Bracton, lib. iii., cap. 22; lib. iv., p. 287, 291; Britton, p. 135.) Hence their decision was accurately termed veredictum, or verdict; whereas the phrase "true verdict" in the modern oath is not only a pleonasm, but is etymologically incorrect, and misdescribes the office of a juror at the present day. Many other incidents of the trial by jury, as recorded in ancient treatises, conclusively show that the jury were merely witnesses. They were brought from the neighbourhood where the disputed fact was suggested to have occurred, because, as the form of the jury process says, they were the persons "by whom the truth of the matter might be better known;" no doubt upon the principle that Vicini vicinorum præsumuntur scire. Again, if the jurors returned by the sheriff in the first instance declared in open court that they knew nothing of the matter in question, others were summoned who were better acquainted with it. (Glanville, lib. ii., cap. 17.) They might be excepted against by the parties upon the same grounds as witnesses in the Court Christian. They were punished for perjury if they gave a wilful false verdict; and for crassa ignorantia if they declared a falsehood or hesitated about their verdict upon a matter of notoriety, which all of the country (de patria) might and ought to have known. (Bracton, p. 290.) And ancient authors solemnly admonish judges to "take good heed in inquisitions touching life and limb, that they diligently examine the jurors from what source they obtain their knowledge, lest peradventure by their negligence in this respect Barabbas should be released and Jesus be crucified." (Bracton, lib. iii. cap. 21; Fleta, lib. i., cap. 34.) It is also remarkable, as one of the numerous circumstances which show the character of the jury in the earlier periods of the history of the institution, that though all other kinds of murder might be tried by a jury, murder by poison was excepted, "because," say the ancient writers, "the crime is so secret that it cannot be the subject of knowledge by the country." (Bracton, lib. iii., cap. 18; Fleta, lib. i., cap. 31.)

The original principle and character of the trial by jury in criminal cases in Scotland appear to have been the same as in England. The following extract is taken from a curious paper delivered to the Speaker of the House of Commons, and recorded on the Journals at the date 4th June, 1607. (Comm. Journ.', vol. i., p. 378.) "In Scotland criminal cases are not governed by the civil law; but ordanes (a word printed by mistake for some other) and juries pass upon life and death, very near according to the law here (in England). Which jury being chosen out of the Four Halfs about (as the Scottish law terms it), which is to say, out of all places round about that are nearest to that part where the fact was committed, the law doth presume that the jury may the better discern the truth of the fact by their own knowledge; and therefore they are not bound to examine any witnesses, except out of their own disposition they shall please to examine them in favour of the party pursuer; which is likewise very seldom or almost never used. It is of truth that the judge may either privately beforehand examine such witnesses as either the party pursuer will offer unto him, or such others as in his own judgment he thinks may best inform him of the truth; and then when the jury is publicly called and admitted, he will cause these depositions to be produced and read; and likewise if the party pursuer desire any witness there present to be examined, he will publicly do it in presence of the jury and both parties." It will be observed, that the mode of commencing the introduction of evidence to juries as described in this

document bears a strong resemblance to the growth of the proceeding in England.

The earliest traces of the examination of witnesses or of evidence being laid before juries in England, which formed the commencement of a total change in their character, occur in the reign of Henry VI. The change was not effected suddenly, or by any particular act of parliament, but was introduced by slow degrees as population increased, and the habits and manners of society underwent alteration; and though distinctly discernible in the reign of Henry VI., was not completely effected before the times of Edward VI. and Mary. Fortescue, in the 26th chapter of his work 'De Laudibus Legum Angliæ,' written at the end of the reign of Henry VI., and about the year 1470, expressly mentions that witnesses were examined and sworn before the jury; but he calls the jury indiscriminately testes and juratores, and makes frequent allusions to their character as witnesses. Shortly after Fortescue's time-namely, in the year 1498-there is a reported case between the Bishop of Norwich and the Earl of Kent (Year Book,' 14 Henry VII.), in which a jury had been separated by a tempest "while the parties were showing their evidence;" and one question raised for the opinion of the court was, whether, when the jury came together again, they were competent to proceed with the case and to give a verdict. The objection pressed was that the jury had separated before the evidence was given; to which it was answered that "the giving the evidence was wholly immaterial, and made the matter neither better nor worse; that evidence was only given in order to inform the consciences of the jury respecting the rights of the parties; but that if neither party chose to give evidence, still the jury would be bound to deliver a verdict."

About the same period,—that is, in the reign of Henry VII.,-it appears from records printed in Rastell's Entries, that demurrers to evidence were an acknowledged form of proceeding, which shows that at that time evidence of some kind was given, and consequently that the character of the jury had been in some degree changed from that of witnesses to that of judges of facts upon testimony. The proofs mentioned in these records are called evidentia; and it is most probable that at first the only evidence given consisted of deeds, writings, and of depositions of absent witnesses taken before the justices of the peace or other magistrates, and that oral testimony was not common until a later period. The entire absence of all mention of evidence or witnesses, as contradistinguished from jurors, in treatises, reports, records, or statutes, previously to the 16th century, strongly corroborates the fact of the early character of the trial by jury. There is no trace of any rules of evidence, nor of any positive law compelling the attendance of witnesses, or punishing them for false testimony or nonattendance, nor of the existence of any process against them before the stat. 5 Eliz. c. 9 (1562). In the case of Summers v. Mosely, reported in 2 Crompton and Meeson, p. 485, Mr. Baron Bayley says that he had been unable to find any precedents of the common Subpoena ad testificandum of an earlier date than the reign of Elizabeth, and expresses a conjecture that this process may have originated with the abovementioned statute. The Subpana ad testificandum does not appear in the registers of Writs and Processes until the reign of James I. (West's 'Symboleography.') Witnesses were examined orally upon the trial of Sir Thomas More, in the reign of Henry VIII.; but the reported state trials in the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary show that the practice in that respect was then by no means settled. In the reign of Elizabeth, however, there is abundant proof, from Sir Thomas Smith's 'Commonwealth of England,' and other authorities, that oral testimony was used without reserve (except in state prosecutions) both in civil and criminal trials; and consequently it cannot be doubted that about the middle of the 16th century the trial by jury had fully assumed the character in which we are now familiar with it-namely, an institution deciding facts for judicial purposes by means of testimony or evidence produced before the jury.

This view of the original character and office of the jury seems to account for the practice of fining or otherwise punishing juries by the court when they gave an unsatisfactory verdict; a practice which was partially continued, though not without remonstrance by legal authorities, after the nature of the institution had been changed. If juries, who were merely witnesses sent for to inform the court of facts which they were presumed certainly to know, returned a wilfully false verdict, they were guilty of a contempt of justice, and might properly be punished; but when their character was changed, and their verdict depended not on their own knowledge of the facts, but upon the impressions produced on their minds by the evidence, such a course of summary punishment became intolerable injustice; and though occasionally practised in the 16th century, was declared to be illegal soon after the Restoration by the celebrated judgment in Bushell's case, reported in Vaughan's Reports, p. 135.

The juries now in use in England in the ordinary courts of justice are grand juries, petty or common juries, and special juries. Grand juries are exclusively incident to courts of criminal jurisdiction; their office is to examine into charges of crimes brought to them at assizes or sessions, and if satisfied that they are true, or at least that they deserve more particular examination, to return a bill of indictment against the accused, upon which he is afterwards tried by the petty jury. A grand jury must consist of twelve at the least. In practice a greater number usually serve, but twelve must concur in finding

every indictment. No further qualification is required for grand jurors (except in the case of grand jurors at the sessions of the peace, provided for by the recent Jury Act) than that they should be freeholders, though to what amount is uncertain; or freemen, lawful liege subjects, and not aliens or outlaws. (Hawkins's 'Pleas of the Crown,' chap. 25, sect. 16.)

Until the end of the 13th century the only qualification required for petty or common juries, for the trial of issues in criminal or civil courts, was that they should be "free and lawful men;" freemen, as holding by free services or free burgesses in towns; and lawful men, that is, persons not outlawed, aliens, or minors, but entitled to the full privileges of the law of England. By the statute of Westminster 2, passed in the 13th year of Edward I. (1296), it was enacted that no man should be put on juries who had not some freehold of the value of 208. a year within the county, or 40s. without it; and this qualification was raised to 40s. in counties by the statute 21 Edward I. The object of these statutes was to protect poor persons from being oppressed and injured by being summoned on juries, and also to obviate the evil of the nonattendance of jurors, which frequently occurred from their inability to leave their agricultural or handicraft occupations. The stat. 2 Henry V. however was expressly intended to secure the intelligence and responsibility of jurors by requiring a property qualification. With this view it enacted that no person should be a juror in capital trials, nor in any real actions, or personal actions where the debt or damages declared for amounted to 40 marks, unless he had lands of the yearly value of 40s.: and if he had not this qualification he might be challenged by either party. This continued to be the qualification of common jurors until the passing of the statute 6 George IV., c. 50, which repealed all former statutes upon this subject, and entirely remodelled the law respecting juries. By this statute " every man (with certain specified exceptions) between the ages of twenty-one years and sixty years who has within the county in which he resides 10l. a year in freehold lands or rents, or 20l. a year in leaseholds for unexpired terms of at least twenty-one years, or who, being a householder, is rated to the poorrate in Middlesex on a value of not less than of 30l., and in any other county of not less than 20%., or who occupies a house containing not less than fifteen windows, is qualified and liable to serve on juries in the superior courts at Westminster and the courts of the counties palatine for the trial of issues to be tried in the county where he resides, and also to serve on grand juries at the sessions of the peace, and on petty juries, for the trial of issues triable at such sessions in the county in which he resides." The exceptions are:-peers, judges of the superior courts, clergymen, Roman Catholic priests, dissenting ministers following no secular employment but that of a schoolmaster, serjeants and barristers at law, and doctors and advocates of the civil law actually practising; attorneys, solicitors, and proctors actually practising; officers of courts actually exercising the duties of their respective offices; coroners, gaolers, and keepers of houses of correction; members and licentiates of the college of physicians actually practising; surgeons, being members of one of the royal colleges of surgeons in London, Edinburgh, or Dublin, and actually practising; apothecaries certificated by the Apothecaries' Company and actually practising; officers in her majesty's navy or army on full pay; pilots licensed by the Trinity House; masters of vessels in the buoy and light service; pilots licensed by the lord-warden of the cinque-ports, or under any act of parliament or charter; household servants of the sovereign; officers of customs and excise; sheriffs' officers, high constables, and parish clerks.

Lists of all persons qualified to be jurors are made out by the churchwardens and overseers of each parish, and fixed on the church door for the first three Sundays in September in each year; these are afterwards allowed at a petty sessions and then delivered to the high constable, who returns them to the next quarter-sessions for the county. The clerk of the peace then arranges the lists in a book, which is called the 'Jurors' Book' for the ensuing year, and afterwards delivers it to the sheriff. From this book the names of the jurors are returned in panels to the different courts.

Special juries are composed of such persons as are described in the Jurors' Book' as esquires, and persons of higher degree, or as bankers or merchants; and it is the duty of the sheriff to make a distinct list of such persons, which is called the 'Special Jurors' List.' When a special jury is ordered by any of the courts, which must always be the result of a special application of one of the parties, 48 names are taken by ballot from this list in the manner particularly described in the statute, which are afterwards reduced to 24 by means of each party striking out 12; and the first 12 of these 24 who answer to their names in court are the special jury for the trial of the cause.

The legitimate mode of objecting to a jury by the parties is by challenge, though in modern practice this course is seldom resorted to, having yielded to the more convenient usage of privately suggesting the objection to the officer who calls the jury in court; upon which the name objected to is passed over as a matter of course without discussion. This practice, though a far less troublesome and obnoxious mode of effecting the object of obtaining a jury indifferent between the parties than a formal challenge, is, strictly speaking, irregular, and being considered to take place by consent, and as a matter of favour, cannot be insisted upon as a right. Challenges are of two kinds : challenges to the array, and challenges to the polls. The challenge to the array is

an objection to the whole panel or list of jurors returned for some partiality or default in the sheriff or the under-sheriff by whom it has been arrayed. Challenges to the polls are objections to particular jurors, either on the ground of incompetency (as if they be aliens, or of insufficient qualification within the provisions of the Jury Act, 6 Geo. IV., cap. 50), or of bias or partiality, or of infamy, as having been convicted of some crime which the law deems infamous. Upon these challenges the cause of objection must in each case be expressly shown to the court; but in trials for capital offences the accused is entitled to challenge peremptorily (that is, without giving any reason) thirty-five jurors. The king, however, as nominal prosecutor, has no right of peremptory challenge, though he is not compelled to show his cause of challenge until the panel is gone through, and unless a full jury cannot be formed without the person objected to. The trial by jury, originally introduced into the law of France in criminal cases by the National Assembly, was retained in the French code. An account of the proceeding and of the qualifications and formation of the jury will be found in the Code d'Instruction Criminelle,' livre ii., tit. 2, chap. iv. and v. It has often been remarked as a singular fact, that the institution which in England has been highly prized as a security to the subject against the crown, should have been preserved in France by a despotic monarch, in the zenith of his power, and certainly not disposed to enlarge popular authority. The advantage of the trial by jury has been frequently the subject of debate among German and French jurists, and in particular the propriety of its introduction has been discussed in the various commissions issued with a view to reforming the laws of several of the German States.

Anciently in Scotland all offences were tried by juries; at present all prosecutions of a higher nature must proceed by an assize or jury of 15 men, who determine their verdict by a majority of voices. (Erskine's 'Principles of the Law of Scotland,' book iv. tit. 4.) In the course of many attempted improvements of the Court of Session, several efforts have been made to introduce the trial by jury into civil proceedings in Scotland; but great and general opposition has been made to it by the courts and the legal profession in Edinburgh. It cannot be said to have been fairly tried as yet, for no judges have been trained to its use, and no generation has had opportunity to learn how to act as jurymen. Whether the people of Scotland shall ever obtain the advantages of our English trial by jury, it seems difficult to say. Recent legislation on the subject, and recent observations in the House of Lords, have demonstrated that as an instrument in the administration of civil justice, trial by jury is not yet practicable in Scotland. JUSTICE CLERK OF SCOTLAND, is now the second president of the Court of Justiciary in Scotland, being originally the clerk of court of the chief justice, or Lord Justice General of Scotland.

At the institution of the Court of Session in 1532, the justice clerk was made one of the judges. This will not surprise us when we consider the constitution of that court. It was essentially an ecclesiastical tribunal, and, agreeably to the practice of such, deliberated in secret with shut doors. It was necessary therefore for the security of the crown that some of the crown officers should be continually present. The justice clerk was one of these: he was public prosecutor on behalf of the crown. The king's treasurer was another; and accordingly both these were lords of session.

A further rise of official dignity took place: for it having become usual to appoint certain lords of session as assessors or assistant judges to the lord justice-general, the justice clerk began in the early part of the 17th century to be appointed to that duty; and about the middle of the same century he had acquired the style of "lord justice clerk." In ten years afterwards the privy council declared the justice clerk a constituent part of the justice court; and in 1672, he was made president of the Court of Justiciary, to preside in absence of the justice-general. His rise in the Court of Session followed; for in 1766, when Miller, afterwards Sir Thomas Miller of Glenlee, took his seat on the bench, it was, by desire of the court, on the right of the lord president; to which latter office he himself afterwards rose, being the first justice clerk so promoted. And in 1811, when the Court of Session, was, by 48 Geo. III., c. 151, divided into two chambers, the lord justice clerk was made ex officio president of the second division. With respect to the justice clerk depute, that officer was long so termed; but when the justice clerk acquired the style of lord, and became a constituent part of the Court of Justiciary, his depute came to be termed "the principal clerk of justiciary," and this becoming a sinecure, he got himself a "depute" about the middle of last century, and the second depute in due course an "assistant;" all of whom, except the first sinecure office, the holder of which was a few years ago bought off by government, continue to this day, and are in the gift of the lord justice clerk.

Besides these there are three other justice clerk deputes, and his appointees. They are commonly called the "circuit clerks," being his deputies to the three circuits of the Court of Justiciary. They had their origin in the act 1587, c. 82, which directed such circuits to be made, in place of the former practice of the justiciar passing through the realm from shire to shire successively.

JUSTICE, LORDS, OF APPEAL IN CHANCERY. These judges, who are two in number, were created by the statute 14 & 15 Vict. c. 83, to assist the Lord Chancellor in the determination of appeals from

the Master of the Rolls and Vice Chancellors. They possess besides an original jurisdiction, so that when all the appeals are disposed of, they may hear causes in the first instance. The Lord Chancellor may sit with them, or separately, as a Court of Appeal. In Bankruptcy the Lords Justices constitute the Court of Appeal; in matters of lunacy they have, under the sign manual, the same authority as the Lord Chancellor. JUSTICES, LORDS. Our kings have been, ever since the Conquest, in the habit of appointing, as occasion required, one or more persons to act for a time as their substitutes in the supreme government either of the whole kingdom or of a part of it. When William I. returned to Normandy, the year after the Conquest, he left his half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and William Fitzherbert, to be Custodes Regni, or guardians of the realm, during his absence; and similar appointments were very frequent under the early Norman and Plantagenet kings. Down to the present time, indeed, similar officers have been appointed under various names, and with more or less extensive powers according to circumstances. Protector, lieutenant, or locum tenens, and regent, have been among the other names by which they have been known. Regents and councils of regency, during the nonage of the king or queen, have been sometimes named by the preceding possessor of the crown; but in modern times such arrangements have been usually made by statute. Coke remarks (4 Inst.' 58) that the methods of appointing a guardian or regent have been so various, that "the surest way is to have him made by authority of the great council in parliament."

The most familiar case of the appointment by the crown of a representative to exercise the supreme executive power, not in a colony or dependency, is that of the appointment of the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, or of a council of government composed of lords justices.

The governor-general of Ireland under the crown has been styled at different times custos (keeper or guardian), justiciary, warden, procurator, seneschal, constable, justice, deputy, and lieutenant. Viceroy is a name of modern introduction. Formerly, upon the avoidance of the office by death or otherwise, the privy council there was authorised to elect a successor, with the restriction that he should be an Englishman and no spiritual person, who held office till the king appointed another. The ancient powers of this officer were almost regal; he performed every act of government without any previous communication with England; and when he left the country he even appointed his own deputy. From the Revolution, however, till the reign of George III., the lord-lieutenant resided very little in Ireland; in several instances the person appointed to the office never went over; in other cases he went over once in two years to hold the session of parliament; and the government was very often left in the hands of lords justices, without a lord-lieutenant at all. In modern times the appointment of lords justices for Ireland has only taken place on the occasional absences of the lord-lieutenant; and the lords justices have usually been the lord primate, the lord chancellor, and the commander of the forces.

In England lords justices and regents have been repeatedly appointed since the Revolution, on occasion of the king going abroad; and the appointment has usually, if not always, been made by letters patent, in the same manner as the lords-lieutenant or lords justices of Ireland have always been appointed. In some cases, however, the aid of parliament has been called in for certain purposes. When King William went over to Ireland, in 1689, he of his own authority appointed the administration of the government to be in the hands of the queen during his absence out of the kingdom, by declaration at the counciltable; and at the same time an act was passed, 1 and 2 W. & M., s. 2, in the preamble of which his majesty's pleasure was recited, and it was enacted, that whensoever his majesty should be absent, it should be lawful for the queen to administer the regal power and government. This act was considered to be necessary, in consequence of the peculiar circumstances in which the queen was placed by the Act of Settlement, which had declared that the entire, perfect, and full exercise of the regal power and government should be only in and executed by his majesty in the names of both their majesties during their joint lives. It was at the same time provided, "That as often as his majesty shall return into this kingdom of England, the sole administration of the regal power and government thereof shall be in his majesty only, as if this act had never been made." After the queen's death lords justices were repeatedly appointed by the king.

One of the provisions of the statute of 12 & 13 W. III. (passed in 1700) for settling the succession in the House of Hanover, was, "That no person who shall hereafter come to the possession of this crown shall go out of the dominions of England, Scotland, or Ireland, without consent of parliament." This clause, however, was repealed in 1716, by 1 George I., stat. 2, c. 51. The repealing act was passed to gratify the king, whose "impatience to visit his German dominions," says Coxe in his 'Life of Walpole,' i. 77, "now became so great as totally to overcome every restraint of prudence and suggestion of propriety, and imperiously to demand indulgence." "The ministry," continues the historian, "were considerably embarrassed on this occasion, and drew up a strong remonstrance representing the inconvenience which would result from the projected journey. The remonstrance, however, not only failed of success, but so far exasperated the king, that he declared he would not endure a longer confinement in this kingdom.