liAiNBRIG 399 concerning the prisoners in writing, then for two lawyers of each party to set down the law; and if the law would justify their proceedings, the prisoners should submit : but if it should appear otherwise, let them be enlarged, and they should, complain no further. He also observed, that if the lawyers should not agree in any points of law, the cause, with the reasons of this difference, should be laid before the chancellor, and by him finally determined. These, generous proposals the vice-chancellor and his col- leagues utterly ,rejected, and would agree to no determina- tion unless it were by two lawyers whom they should themselves appoint, or by the high commission in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Certain eminent persons, heads of colleges in the university, became earnest suitors to have them bailed, but all to no purpose. The two prisoners were informed by their learnedcounsel, that upon the refusal of the oath, tendered them ex mero officio, they ought not to have been detained in prison, without bail, as might be proved by the laws of the land, and by the equity of the statute made 25 Henry VIII. Also, the counsel conceived them greatly mistaken in the whole of their proceedings. For, while they founded these proceedings on the statute of the university, they found therein neither the offer of the oath, which was done ex mero officio, being jurisdiction ecclesiastical ; nor im- prisonment proceeding from civil power; two different authorities compounded in the present action. Though the above proceedings were said to be according to the precedents of the university, the vice-chancellor refused to shew, or suffer to be shewn, the register of any such precedent. Neither could it be found that any such prece- dent had ever occurred, excepting one solitary instance when Dr. Bying was vice-chancellor. At the same times Dr. Goad, provost of King's college ; Dr. Whitaker, master of St. John's college ; and Mr. Chadderton, master of Emanuel college, all protested that theywould have nohand in these proceedings. Also among the fifteen heads of colleges, only five, and of the six other doctors, only two would join in these disgraceful oppressions. Notwithstanding Mr. Bainbrigs was charged with coun- terfeiting sickness, the physician whom he employed, declared the contrary under his own hand. And the prisoners, so far from being allowed 'to go out of their prisons, as was represented to the chancellor, only took the liberty once to go to their college ona special occasion,
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