Note 453 — Chapter XVII · ON THE CONSTITUTION OF SCOTLAND—INTRODUCTION OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM
Reading edition
Arnot, pp. 67, 329; State Trials, ii. 884. The prisoner was told that he was not charged for saying mass, nor for seducing the people to popery, nor for anything that concerned his conscience; but for declining the king's authority, and maintaining treasonable opinions, as the statutes libelled on made it treason not to answer the king or his council in any matter which should be demanded.
It was one of the most monstrous iniquities of a monstrous jurisprudence, the Scots criminal law, to debar a prisoner from any defence inconsistent with the indictment; that is, he might deny a fact, but was not permitted to assert that, being true, it did not warrant the conclusion of guilt. Arnot, 354.