* Rush, vol. v. p. 122.
** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 178. Whitlocke, p. 37.
What rendered the power of the commons more formidable was, the extreme prudence with which it was conducted. Not content with the authority which they had acquired by attacking these great ministers, they were resolved to render the most considerable bodies of the nation obnoxious to them. Though the idol of the people, they determined to fortify themselves likewise with terrors, and to overawe those who might still be inclined to support the falling ruins of monarchy.
During the late military operations, several powers had been exercised by the lieutenants and deputy lieutenants of counties; and these powers, though necessary for the defence of the nation, and even warranted by all former precedent yet not being authorized by statute, were now voted to be illegal, and the persons who had assumed them declared delinquents. This term was newly come into vogue, and expressed a degree and species of guilt not exactly known or ascertained. In consequence of that determination, many of the nobility and prime gentry of the nation, while only exerting as they justly thought, the legal powers of magistracy unexpectedly found themselves involved in the crime of delinquency. And the commons reaped this multiplied advantage by their vote: they disarmed the crown; they established the maxims of rigid law and liberty; and they spread the terror of their own authority.[*]
The writs for ship money had been directed to the sheriffs, who were required, and even obliged, under severe penalties, to assess the sums upon individuals, and to levy them by their authority: yet were all the sheriffs, and all those who had been employed in that illegal service, voted, by a very rigorous sentence, to be delinquents. The king, by the maxims of law, could do no wrong: his ministers and servants, of whatever degree, in case cf any violation of the constitution, were alone culpable.[**]
All the farmers and officers of the customs, who had been employed during so many years in levying tonnage and poundage and the new impositions, were likewise declared criminals, and were afterwards glad to compound for a pardon by paying a fine of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
Every discretionary or arbitrary sentence of the star chamber and high commission, courts which, from their very constitution, were arbitrary, underwent a severe scrutiny; and all those who had concurred in such sentences were voted to be liable to the penalties of law.[***] No minister of the king, no member of the council, but found himself exposed by this decision.
The judges who had given their vote against Hambden in the trial of ship money, were accused before the peers, and obliged to find surety for their appearance. Berkeley, a judge of the king’s bench, was seized by order of the house, even when sitting in his tribunal; and all men saw with astonishment the irresistible authority of their jurisdiction.[****]
The sanction of the lords and commons, as well as that of the king, was declared necessary for the confirmation of ecclesiastical canons.[v] And this judgment, it must be confessed, however reasonable, at least useful, it would have been difficult to justify by any precedent.[v*]
* Clarendon, vol. i. p. 176.
** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 176.
*** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 177.
**** Whitlocke, p. 39.
v Nalson, vol. i. p. 673.
v* An act of parliament, 25th Henry VIII., cap. 19,
allowed the convocation with the king’s consent to make
canons. By the famous act of submission to that prince, the
clergy bound themselves to enact no canons without the
king’s consent. The parliament was never mentioned nor
thought of. Such pretensions as the commons advanced at
present, would in any former age have been deemed strange
usurpations.
But the present was no time for question or dispute. That decision which abolished all legislative power except that of parliament, was requisite for completing the new plan of liberty, and rendering it quite uniform and systematical. Almost all the bench of bishops, and the most considerable of the inferior clergy, who had voted in the late convocation, found themselves exposed by these new principles to the imputation of delinquency.[*]