kingdom. In reference to this ancient practice it is worthy of remark, that in the preamble of the Act 4 George I. cap. 11. regulating the transportation of criminals to America, one of the grounds of that enactment is stated to be the failure of those who undertook to transport themselves. Banishment from Scotland was in like manner the appropriate award of certain crimes and misdemeanours, by the laws of that ancient kingdom; which, it is well known, were more generally formed on the Roman model than those of England: and in both kingdoms the sentence of outlawry, coupled, as it usually was in the savage practice of the Stuarts, with the additional sentence of "intercommuning," as it was designated by the law of Scotland, was a mere copy of the Roman judicial sentence of aquæ et ignis interdictio; the outlawed or intercommuned person being placed under the ban of the kingdom, and all persons being prohibited, under pain of death, from supplying him with the necessaries of life.[1]
- ↑ The term Banishment proclaims its own origin and primitive meaning; being derived from the practice of placing obnoxious individuals or communities under the ban of the German empire. Ban, bannir, banni; Ban, banish; Ulrich, Der Verbannte, Gross-Hertzog von Wurtemberg.
The following lines, from Spenser's minor poem entitled
