Robins, who had been an accomplice in the guilt, was condemned by a sentence equally severe.[*] Such events are rather to be considered as rare and detached incidents, collected by the severe scrutiny of historians, than as proofs of the prevailing genius of the king's administration which seems to have been more gentle and equitable than, that of most of his predecessors: there were, on the whole, only five or six such instances of rigor during the course of fifteen years, which elapsed before the meeting of the long parliament.

And it is also certain, that scandal against the great, though seldom prosecuted at present, is, however, in the eye of the law, a great crime, and subjects the offender to very heavy penalties.
There are other instances of the high respect paid to the nobility and to the great in that age, when the powers of monarchy, though disputed, still maintained themselves in their pristine vigor.

Clarendon[**] tells us a pleasant incident to this purpose: a waterman, belonging to a man of quality, having a squabble with a citizen about his fare, showed his badge, the crest of his master, which happened to be a swan; and thence insisted on better treatment from the citizen.

But the other replied carelessly, that he did not trouble his head about that goose.

For this offence, he was summoned before the marshal's court; was fined, as having opprobriously defamed the nobleman's crest, by calling the swan a goose; and was in effect reduced to beggary.
Sir Richard Granville had thought himself ill used by the earl of Suffolk in a lawsuit; and he was accused before the star chamber of having said of that nobleman, that he was a base lord.