NOTE: The Petition (backdated to 1627) was drafted by Sir Edward Coke and demanded
a redress of grievances that included (§1) taxation without Parliament’s consent, (§2)
forced loans, (§3-4) unlawful seizure of property, (§5) imprisonment without cause, (§6)
forced billeting (quartering) of troops, and (§7) the use of martial law in peacetime.
Charles I soon afterward dissolved Parliament, but was confronted again in 1641 with the
petition and several others, including the Grand Remonstrance, which led to a division in
Parliament with the creation of a royalist party. The Magna Charta, the Petition of Right,
and the English Bill of Rights (1689), pp. 80-87 are all examples of covenant lawsuits.
As with a writ of mandamus, these documents are designed to call a public officer to
account and demand that he do his duty. Seen in light of the model of resistance to
tyranny, the first two are examples of petition: the Magna Charta rather forcefully so.
The second step, flight, is ironically illustrated in the last example by the flight of the king.
Indeed, the language of the opening section of the English Bill of Rights should be very
familiar to Americans because of its similarity to the Declaration of Independence. The
difference is that, in this case, the tyrant has already fled the country and, as Eugen
Rosenstock-Huessy noted, cast the Great Seal into the Thames. In the American case,
the tyrant has declared his subjects to be an enemy people (the Prohibitory Act) and
thus, as far as they are concerned, has effectively vacated his throne.
2. Potential Loophole
a. The Tax in Times of Emergency had previously been imposed only on port cities
3. Ship Money Case, 1637: Trial of John Hampden
4. Executive Prerogative: Doctrine of Royal Absolutism
a. Use of “emergency powers” declarations
B. ALGERNON SIDNEY (42-44)
1. George Jeffreys
NOTE: Jeffreys was not a Puritan but an Anglican. The Puritans were forced out of
positions of authority with the accession of Charles II in the Restoration of 1660, when
Jeffreys was only 12. Cromwell had died in 1658. Jeffreys is even more infamous for his
role presiding over the Bloody Assizes (1685). He was subsequently made Lord
Chancellor but imprisoned after the Glorious Revolution. He died in the Tower in April
1689.
2. Indictment of Algernon Sidney (Rye House Plot):
NOTE: Again, the author wrongly accuses the Puritans when, in fact, the problem was
with royalists. Sidney was convicted of treason by the testimony of a single witness. The
required second “witness” was his own writings. Patrick Henry, James Madison, and
others helped founded Hampden-Sydney College.
3. Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government
NOTE: Written as a response to Filmer’s Patriarcha, this work set forth Sidney’s
republican views. Sidney belonged to a political circle that included the Earl of
Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper) and John Locke. Anthony Ashley Cooper, a
cofounder of the Province of Carolina (two rivers in South Carolina are named after him)
was a remarkable political survivor. He was elected to the Short Parliament, blocked
from taking a seat in the Long Parliament, turned against Charles I, served on Cromwell’s
Council of State, resigned in 1655, supported the Restoration, and was involved with the
trial of the Regicides, for which service he was created Baron Ashley. As a member of
the Cabal (1667-1674) [an acronym for its five members], Cooper was one of five Privy
Councillors who became the governing clique, serving first as Chancellor of the
Exchequer, then a year as Lord Chancellor, and ended as First Lord of Trade, after which
he made was made Baron Cooper and the first Earl of Shaftesbury. A few years later