iously. In the meantime, soldiers were billeted on the people. Crimes, of which ordinary justice should have taken cognizance, were punished by martial law. Nearly eighty gentlemen were imprisoned for refusing to contribute to the forced loan. The lower people, who showed any signs of insubordination, were pressed into the fleet or compelled to serve in the army. Money, however, came in slowly; and the king was compelled to summon another Parliament. In the hope of conciliating his subjects, he set at liberty the persons who had been imprisoned for refusing to comply with his unlawful demands. Hampden regained his freedom; and was immediately re-elected burgess for Wendover.

Early in 1628 the Parliament met. During its first session, the Commons prevailed on the king, after many delays and much equivocation, to give, in return for five subsidies, his full and solemn assent to that celebrated instrument - the second great charter of the liberties of England - known by the name of the Petition of Right. By agreeing to this act, the king bound himself to raise no taxes without the consent of Parliament, to imprison no man except by legal process, to billet no more soldiers on the people, and to leave the cognizance of offences to the ordinary tribunals.

In the summer this memorable Parliament was prorogued. It met again in January, 1629.

Buckingham was no more. That weak, violent, and dissolute adventurer, who, with no talents or acquirements but those of a mere courtier, had, in a great crisis of foreign and domestic politics, ventured on the part of prime minister, had fallen during the recess of Parliament, by the hand of an assassin. Both before and after his death, the war had been feebly and unsuccessfully conducted. The king had continued, in direct 'violation of the Petition of Right, to raise tonnage and poundage, without the consent of Parliament. The troops had again been billeted on the people; and it was clear to the Commons that the five subsidies which they had given, as the price of the national liberties, had been given in vain.

LORD NUGENT, Memorials of Hampden in Edinburgh Review. LIV. 516-517.

MACAULAY (1849)

The king called a third Parliament, and soon perceived that the opposition was stronger and fiercer than ever. He now determined on a change of tactics. Instead of opposing an inflexible resistance to the demands of the Commons, he, after much altercation and many evasions, agreed to a compromise which, if he had faithfully adhered to it, would have averted a long series of calamities. The parliament granted an ample supply. The king ratified, in the most solemn manner, that celebrated law which is known by the name of the Petition of Right, and which is the second great charter of the liberties of England. By ratifying that law, he bound himself never again to raise money without the consent of the Houses, never again to imprison any person, except in due course of law, and never again to subject his people to the jurisdiction of courts martial.

The day on which the royal sanction was, after many delays, solemnly given to this great act, was a day of joy and hope. The Commons, who crowded the bar of the House of Lords, broke forth into loud acclamations as soon as the clerk had pronounced the ancient form of words by which our princes have, during many ages, signified their assent to the wishes of the estates of the realm. Those acclamations were re-echoed by the voice of the capital and of the nation; but, within three weeks, it became manifest that Charles had no intention of observing the compact into which he had entered. The supply given by the representatives of the nation was collected. The promise by which that supply had been obtained was broken. A violent contest followed. The parliament was dissolved with every mark of royal displeasure.

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, History of England. I. 66.

CREASY (1859)

On the 2nd of June, A. D. 1628, the peers were assembled, the Commons summoned, and the king appeared in the House of Lords to give his answer in Parliament to the bill. But, to the surprise of all men, Charles, instead of using the wellknown ancient form of words by which such a bill receives the royal assent, addressed the Parliament and told them, "the

king willeth that right be done according to the laws and customs of the realm, and that the statutes be put in due execution, that his subjects may have no cause to complain of any wrong or oppression contrary to their just rights and liberties; to the preservation whereof he holds himself in conscience as well obliged, as of his prerogative."

The Commons returned highly incensed with this evasive circumlocution. They forthwith began to assail the favourites of the Crown, and impeached a Dr. Mainwaring who had preached a sermon, which had afterwards been printed by the king's command, in which discourse the right divine of kings to deal as they pleased with their subjects' property on emergencies, whether parliament consented or not, and the duty of passive obedience in the subject, were only and unreservedly maintained. The Commons procured the trial and condemnation of this satellite of arbitrary power, and were proceeding to assail others higher in Charles's councils, when the king's obstinacy at length gave way, and the Petition of Right received the royal assent in the customary form of Norman French, and this second great solemn declaration of the liberties of Englishmen was declared to be the law of the land, amidst the general rejoicings of the nation.

E. S. CREASY, Rise and Progress of the English Constitution. 259.

HANNIS TAYLOR (1889)

Side by side with Eliot, Coke, and Phelips now stood Sir Thomas Wentworth, who did yeoman's service in the popular cause in a great oration in which, after reviewing all the questions in controversy, except those involving the subject of religion, he demanded that there should be no more forced loans, no more illegal imprisonments, no more compulsory employments abroad, no billeting of soldiers without the assent of the householder, thus outlining the substance of the great statute, afterwards known as the Petition of Right, which derived its form from Coke.

HANNIS TAYLOR, Origin and Growth of the English Constitution. II. 268.

RUDOLF VON GNEIST (1889)

The Petition of Right is treated in later Constitutional State Law as a third Magna Charta, because by it a whole series of glaring administrative abuses are declared illegal in the most unequivocal terms.

RUDOLF VON GNEIST, History of the English Parliament. 253.

GARDINER (1889)

The Petition of Right is memorable as the first statutory restriction of the powers of the Crown since the accession of the Tudor dynasty. Yet, though the principles laid down in it had the widest possible bearing, its remedies were not intended to apply to all questions which had arisen or might arise between the Crown and the Parliament, but merely to those which had arisen since Charles's accession. Parliament had waived, for the present at least, the consideration of Buckingham's misconduct. It had also waived the consideration of the question of Impositions.

The motives of the Commons in keeping silence on the Impositions were probably twofold. In the first place, they probably wished to deal separately with the new grievances, because in dealing with them they would restrain the King's power to make war without Parliamentary consent. In the second place, they had a Tonnage and Poundage Bill before them. Such a Bill had been introduced into each of the preceding Parliaments, but in each case an early dissolution had hindered its consideration, and the long debates on the Petition of Right now made it impossible to proceed farther with it in the existing session. Yet, for three years the King had been collecting Tonnage and Poundage, just as he collected the Impositions, that is to say, as if he had no need of a Parliamentary grant. The Commons therefore proposed to save the right of Parliament by voting Tonnage and Poundage for a single year, and to discuss the matter at length the following session. When the King refused to accept this compromise they had some difficulty in choosing a counter-move. They were precluded from any argument from ancient statute and precedent, because the judges in Bates's case had laid down

the law against them, and they therefore had recourse to the bold assertion that the Petition of Right had settled the question in their favour. Charles answered by proroguing Parliament, and took occasion in so doing to repudiate the doctrine which they advanced.

SAMUEL R. GARDINER, The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolu tion. xxiii.-xxiv.

J. K. HOSMER (1890)

At first, feeble and fitful, the opposition gathered force, developing under Charles I. into a stern battle between King and that conservative element of the people who were determined to uphold the ancient ways. The King was forced by the Petition of Right, in 1628, to admit that his arbitrary course was wrong. It was a profession of the lips, not the heart. J. K. HOSMER, Anglo-Saxon Freedom. 107.