Warwick, the king-maker, delighted in practising this mode of “attaching people.”  Cromwell made use of it, especially in Connaught; and it was with this precaution of silence that Trailie Arcklo, a relation of the Earl of Ormond, was arrested at Kilmacaugh.

These captures of the body by the mere motion of justice represented rather the mandat de comparution than the warrant of arrest.  Sometimes they were but processes of inquiry, and even argued, by the silence imposed upon all, a certain consideration for the person seized.  For the mass of the people, little versed as they were in the estimate of such shades of difference, they had peculiar terrors.

It must not be forgotten that in 1705, and even much later, England was far from being what she is to-day.  The general features of its constitution were confused and at times very oppressive.  Daniel Defoe, who had himself had a taste of the pillory, characterizes the social order of England, somewhere in his writings, as the “iron hands of the law.”  There was not only the law; there was its arbitrary administration.  We have but to recall Steele, ejected from Parliament; Locke, driven from his chair; Hobbes and Gibbon, compelled to flight; Charles Churchill, Hume, and Priestley, persecuted; John Wilkes sent to the Tower.  The task would be a long one, were we to count over the victims of the statute against seditious libel.  The Inquisition had, to some extent, spread its arrangements throughout Europe, and its police practice was taken as a guide.  A monstrous attempt against all rights was possible in England.  We have only to recall the Gazetier Cuirasse.  In the midst of the eighteenth century, Louis XV. had writers, whose works displeased him, arrested in Piccadilly.  It is true that George II. laid his hands on the Pretender in France, right in the middle of the hall at the opera.  Those were two long arms—­that of the King of France reaching London; that of the King of England, Paris!  Such was the liberty of the period.

CHAPTER IV.

URSUS SPIES THE POLICE.

As we have already said, according to the very severe laws of the police of those days, the summons to follow the wapentake, addressed to an individual, implied to all other persons present the command not to stir.

Some curious idlers, however, were stubborn, and followed from afar off the cortege which had taken Gwynplaine into custody.

Ursus was of them.  He had been as nearly petrified as any one has a right to be.  But Ursus, so often assailed by the surprises incident to a wandering life, and by the malice of chance, was, like a ship-of-war, prepared for action, and could call to the post of danger the whole crew—­that is to say, the aid of all his intelligence.

He flung off his stupor and began to think.  He strove not to give way to emotion, but to stand face to face with circumstances.