1 Habeas corpus could operate in favour of the poor. I have come across a case in the Admiralty papers in the 1770s, of one Sarah, whose husband was a baker who had been seized by the press gang. His wife procured a writ of habeas corpus. One can follow the husband's fate in the whole correspondence all the way to the West Indies whither he had been sent, and back again to the bosom of his wife some three years later.