Britain's judicial system included the Court of King's Bench.
As its name suggested, the Court of King's Bench was a court before the king, and during the Middle Ages it enjoyed incomparably lofty prestige.
However, with the establishment of constitutional monarchy, the Court of King's Bench was supplanted by the House of Lords. Its status even fell below that of the Court of Appeal, and its main duty became hearing major civil cases at first instance.
Peltier, a Royalist writer exiled in Britain, was arrested for publishing a great deal of rhetoric attacking Napoleon, while the other writers were left alone. Spencer Perceval, Britain's Attorney General, had originally hoped to use this to make those writers stop scribbling nonsense, but under pressure from France, he ultimately decided to prosecute Peltier for libel. The jury at the Court of King's Bench deliberated for only a minute before unanimously finding Peltier guilty.
They had all heard, more or less, of his bloody and terrifying performance. Someone like that was better off locked in an asylum or prison. Yet other writers, such as Jacques Reynier and Nicolas Dutaillis, were neither arrested nor sentenced. This had more or less to do with Napoleon's recent movements.
The Anglo-French naval truce had begun with the Treaty of Lunéville in 1800. At the time, Britain had also wanted to join the negotiations, but Napoleon set a condition: they could join only after a naval truce had been reached.
It was a verbal agreement and had not been written into any treaty, including the Treaty of Amiens. Napoleon's dispatch of troops into Switzerland had in fact violated the Treaty of Lunéville, but Austria said nothing. Thus, although the region had long lain within France's sphere of influence and Britain had no national interests there, Britain's hawks were even