416-424.] It was alleged that the
guild, with this intent, had limited the working hours in the day, the
working days in the year, and the number of apprentices the freemen might
employ; and the prayer was that for these abuses the charter should be
annulled.
The cause was tried before a jury, who found the truth of some of the
charges; but the judgment is lost, as the roll is imperfect.
There was danger, moreover, to the citizen from the oppression of these
powerful bodies, as well as to the public from their usurpations; and were
authority wholly wanting, argument would be almost unnecessary to prove
that some appellate tribunal must always have had jurisdiction to pass
upon the validity of corporate legislation; for otherwise any summary
punishment might have been inflicted upon an individual, though
notoriously unlawful, and the only redress possible would have been
subsequent proceedings to vacate the charter.
Through appeals, corporations could be controlled; and by none was this
control so stubbornly disputed, or its necessity so clearly demonstrated,
as by the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England. A good
illustration is the trial of the Quaker, Wenlock Christison, for his life
in 1661.
"William Leddra being thus dispatch'd, it was resolved to make an end also
of Wenlock Christison.
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