Dr Oliver Hartwich: Ten years for keeping quiet? NZ eyes end to right to silence

In April 1638, guards in London tied a young man to a cart and whipped him through the streets to Westminster. There they locked his head and hands in a wooden frame for all to see. When he kept talking to the crowd, they gagged him.

His name was John Lilburne, and the authorities had arrested him for spreading leaflets that attacked the church’s bishops. Yet the whipping was not punishment for the leaflets. It was for refusing to swear an oath demanded by the Star Chamber, a royal court that sat without a jury.