Note 568 — Chapter VI · (continued 2)

State Trials, ii. 869; Bacon, ii. 483, etc.; Dalrymple's Memorials of James I., vol. i. p. 56. Some other very unjustifiable constructions of the law of treason took place in this reign. Thomas Owen was indicted and found guilty, under the statute of Edward III., for saying, that "the king, being excommunicated (i.e. if he should be excommunicated) by the pope, might be lawfully deposed and killed by any one, which killing would not be murder, being the execution of the supreme sentence of the pope;" a position very atrocious, but not amounting to treason. State Trials, ii. 879. And Williams, another papist, was convicted of treason by a still more violent stretch of law, for writing a book predicting the king's death in the year 1621. Id. 1085.