My Lords, I am of counsel with Sir Edmund Hampden. … I shall humbly move you that this gentleman may also be bailed; for under favour, my Lord, there is no cause in the return why he should be any farther imprisoned and restrained of his liberty. … Now, my Lord, I will speak a word or two to the matter of the return; and that is touching the imprisonment, ‘per speciale mandatum domini regis,’ by the Lords of the Council, without any cause expressed. … I think that by the constant and settled laws of this kingdom, without which we have nothing, no man can be justly imprisoned by either of them, without a cause of the commitment expressed in the return. … The statute of Magna Carta, cap. 29 — that statute if it were fully executed as it ought to be, every man would enjoy his liberty better than he doth … out of the very body of this Act of Parliament, besides the explanation of other statutes, it appears, ‘Nullus liber homo capiatur vel imprisonetur nisi per legem terrae.’ … My Lords, I know these words, ‘legem terrae,’ do leave the question where it was, if the interpretation of the statute were not. But I think, under your Lordships' favour, there it must be intended, by ‘due course of law,’ to be either by presentment or by indictment. My Lords, if the meaning of these words, ‘per legem terrae,’ were but, as we use to say, ‘according to the law’ — which leaves the matter very uncertain; and [if] ‘per speciale mandatum &c.’ be within the meaning of these words ‘according to the law,’ then this Act had done nothing.