Court judgments and fines could be challenged for error only
within twenty years.
Court decisions were still appealable to the House of Lords. In
1668, Skinner v. East India Company held that the House of Lords
could not exercise original jurisdiction in civil cases between
commoners as it had claimed, but retained its appellate
jurisdiction. In 1675, the House of Lords acquired the new
judicial function of hearing appeals from the Chancery Court by
virtue of the case of Shirley vs. Fagg.
Any gaol keeper allowing a prisoner to escape in return for money
lost his office forever and had to forfeit 500 pounds.
The last burning of the occasional burnings of a woman as a
penalty for an offense was in 1688.
The last bill of attainder, which condemned a person to death,
occurred in 1697.
The pillory was still in use.
Benefit of clergy was taken away from those who stole cloth or
woolen manufactures from their drying racks or who embezzled
military stores or ammunition worth at least 20s, or stole goods
of over 5s. value from a dwelling house with a person therein put
in fear, a dwelling house in daytime with a person therein, or by
day or night a shop or warehouse.
A statute of 1661 gave jurisdiction to naval courts-martial to
decide cases at sea, e.g. insubordination; failure to fight the
enemy, a pirate, or rebels; not assisting a friend, mutiny,
drunkenness, creating a disturbance to protest the quality of the
food, quarreling, sleeping on watch, sodomy, murder, robbery,
theft, and misdemeanors.
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