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where a corporation has been adjudged, by a Court of Law, to be dissolved by a judgment of seizure quosque, upon an information in the nature of a quo warranto, for default of appearance. The Court of King's Bench, in giving judgment in the present [365] cause, relied mainly upon the report of a case, in the Year Book of the 15th Edward IV. respecting a market, as an authority against the position above stated. That was a proceeding, by writ of quo warranto, and not by information in the nature of a quo warranto: the cases are not analogous; but supposing them to be so, the authority of the case, in the Year Book of 15th Edward the Fourth, is shaken by Mr. Justice Jenkins's report of it, in his Centuries, p. 141. (See the difference as to the process and effect of each, 1 Sid. 86, and the cases there cited.) The Court of King's Bench decided the present question, conceiving that the judgment in the case in the 15th Edward the Fourth, was a final judgment of seizure of the market, as being forfeited. According to Mr. Justice Jenkins, the judgment given was of seizure only, as contra-distinguished from that of seizure, as being forfeited. Upon an examination of the record itself, remaining in the King's Bench Treasury, it appears that the judgment given was of seizure quosque merely. A writ of seizure also appears to have issued upon that judgment, and to have been executed and returned by the Sheriff. The market was not forfeited by the judgment then given; the prosecutor had not got to the extremity of process, nor was the suit determined; for by the controlment rolls of the King's Bench, it appears, that after the writ of seizure executed, process by alias and pluries venire facias, and distringas, was continued against the defendant, for no less a period of time than fourteen years, and the suit determined at length by the death of the defendant, as appears by the Sheriff's return, in the second year of Richard the Third.

On the other side it was contended (E. Bearcroft, F. Bower, H. Leycester), that the old corporation of the city of Chester, which had subsisted under the charters of Henry the Seventh and Elizabeth, was dissolved by the judgment upon the quo warranto stated in the replication. The Citizens and inhabitants of Chester were incorporated by the accepted charter of Charles the Second, stated in the plea. That corporation, and the charter which created it, still subsist; and the defendant in error was duly elected and admitted to the office of Alderman under that subsisting charter. But on the part of the plaintiff in error, various objections had been made. 1st objection: That King Charles the Second had no power to grant such charter; because the charters of Henry the Seventh and Elizabeth, and the corporation created and confirmed thereby. notwithstanding the said judgment, still subsisted and because a corporation cannot be forfeited or dissolved, either by its own act, or by any judgment of a Court of Law. To this it was answered, that every franchise is by law liable to forfeiture for abuse. No exception to this general rule is found in favour of the franchise of being a corporation; and it appears from the case of the corporation of the city of London, the authorities there cited, and a variety of other cases, that corporations are subject to the same rule.

2d Objection: That the information, being in disaffirmance of the corporation, should not have been brought against the Mayor and Citizens in their corporate capacity, but against the individuals by name who were supposed guilty of the usurpation. Answer. Though the information might have been brought [366] against the individuals by name, it might also be brought against them in the corporate name which they had themselves assumed. They acted as a corporation de facto, they might have been so de jure. Whether they were or not, and whether they had forfeited the franchise of being so, could not be known till judgment. There are many instances of similar informations; and in some of them judgment has been given against the corporation, which in consequence of such judgment became extinct. At all events, in the present case, the defendants neither having pleaded in abatement, or reversed the judgment by a writ of error, that judgment remains in force.

3d Objection: That a corporation cannot be forfeited before appearance. Answer: Informations in the nature of quo warranto, are founded upon the statute of quo warranto, 6 Edward I. and on the proceedings relative to franchises before the Justices in eyre; from which, and from the comment upon the said statute in the 2d Inst. 282. it clearly appears, that if a party in possession of a franchise, on being summoned to appear before the Justices in eyre, did not appear, the franchise was seised into the King's hands, which, in the same eyre, the party might replevy; but if he did not