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The Great Council of Parliament and the First Ordinances: The Constitutional Theory of the Civil War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Michael Mendle
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Extract

In the militia ordinance of March 5, 1642, the houses of Parliament declared an emergency and “ordained” a solution. The emergency was the “imminent Danger” posed to king, Parliament, and kingdom by the “Rebellion and Insurrections” of “Papists, and other ill-affected Persons.” The solution was the selection of suitable county lieutenants, who were authorized to appoint deputies and officers and otherwise perform their duties.

Charles rejected the ordinance, ensuring a double confrontation: an arms race and the public exchanges known as the “war of words.” The Civil War—the predictable outcome of the rattling of words and swords—was bound intimately to the defense or attack of the three propositions stated or implied by the militia ordinance: that there was an emergency, that to address it the two houses required control of the militia, and that an “ordinance” was the appropriate constitutional strategy for the occasion.

The third matter is the focus of this study. But the genius of the militia ordinance and, more generally, the central constitutional assertion of the two houses on the eve of civil war was that the emergency, the mobilization of force, and the ordinance were intertwined beyond untangling. It was not merely that the militia ordinance was a response to an emergency situation beyond the reach of exact precedent. It was equally true that the constitutional thinking of parliamentary leaders, developed well before the militia ordinance and the train of events to which it specifically refers (the Irish rebellion of October 1641 and the attempt upon the five members of January 1642), more or less obliged them to produce an emergency as the grounds for the type of action they took.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , April 1992 , pp. 133 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1992

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References

1 The Private Journals of the Long Parliament, 3 January to 5 March 1642, ed. Coates, Willson H., Young, Anne Steele, and Snow, Vernon F. (New Haven, Conn., 1982), p. 552Google Scholar (hereafter Private Journals I). This text, derived from the Lord's Journal, is nearly identical to the abbreviated Commons' Journal text used in Kenyon, J. P., The Stuart Constitution: Documents and Commentary, 2d ed. (Cambridge, 1986), p. 219Google Scholar.

2 The militia ordinance and the controversy it engendered have been discussed notably by Schwoerer, Lois, “The Fittest Subject for a King's Quarrel,” Journal of British Studies 11 (1971): 45–76Google Scholar, and “No Standing Armies!” The Antiarmy Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Baltimore, 1974), pp. 33–50Google Scholar.

3 On the relation of early parliaments to other councils of the king, see Sayles, G. O., The King's Parliament of England (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; Richardson, H. G. and Sayles, G. O., “Parliaments and Great Councils in Medieval England,” in their The English Parliament in the Middle Ages (London, 1981)Google Scholar; Holmes, Peter, “The Great Council in the Reign of Henry VII,” English Historical Review 101 (1986): 840–62Google Scholar; Guy, John, Tudor England (Oxford, 1981), pp. 59, 322Google Scholar.

4 Foster, Elizabeth Read, “The Painful Labour of Mr. Elsyng,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 62, pt. 8 (1972): 56CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “all parliament matters are entered in a fair language and not in commanding terms, for so in the declarations of the causes of summons, it is seldom said directly that the king wants or expects money. And in many parliaments … the king requires the counsel and advice of the Commons … but what did [this] produce? a subsidy; and nothing else did they confer of.”

5 “A Proclamation declaring the Kings Royall pleasure for the Assembling of the Parliament” (February 16, 1628) and “A Proclamation for a generall Fast to bee held throughout this Realme of England” (February 14, 1629), in Stuart Royal Proclamations, Volume 2: Royal Proclamations of King Charles I, 1625–1646, ed. Larkin, James F. (Oxford, 1983), pp. 188, 221Google Scholar. When the same phrase was perceived as constitutionally aggressive, Charles explicitly rejected it; see text at p. 138 below.

6 “A true presentation of fore-past parliaments to the view of present times and of posteritie,” Folger Shakespeare Library MS v. b. 189, pp. 55, 62 (the king does not “intend that his Subiectes should Elect, and send to his Parliament Tribunos Plebis”). Internal evidence points to composition in or after 1628; the most precise (p. 5) is the example given of speech “without Metaphors, or Equivocatio Vocis”: “the number 1631.” The tract is now attributed to Sir Francis Kynaston. See Cope, Esther, Politics without Parliaments, 1629–1640 (London, 1987), pp. 27–28Google Scholar; and Sommerville, Johann, “Ideology, Property, and the Constitution,” in Conflict in Early Stuart England, ed. Cust, Richard and Hughes, Ann (London, 1990), p. 68, n. 9Google Scholar.

7 Howell, Thomas Bayly, ed., A Complete Collection of State Trials, 33 vols. (London, 1809–1826), vol. 3, col. 1101Google Scholar.

8 “A true presentation,” p. 14. The words quoted refer to the so-called Parliament of Fools, which was held up as an unfortunate precursor of the current variety.

9 The Priviledges and Practice of Parliaments in England ([London], 1628), p. 3Google Scholar; for the proclamation, see n. 4 above.

10 “A Dialogue betwene Philoleutheras a Louer of Liberty or as Parliament Man and Philopolites a Louer of his Countrie, or Motives to Induce an Annual Parliament,” British Library (BL), Harleian MS (Harl.) 305, fols. 271–272v.

11 For the distinction between privilege and liberty, see Elton, G. R., The Tudor Constitution, 2d ed. (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 260, 263Google Scholar. See also “A true presentation,” pp. 45, 69–70.

12 Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, ed. Hartley, T. E. (Wilmington, Del., 1981), 1:424–25, 433, 435Google Scholar.

13 Elton, p. 273.

14 Ibid., p. 274.

15 “Government” is used here in the medieval sense of gubernaculum or, in modern terms, executive power. For the political context of free speech in the parliament of 1621, see Russell, Conrad, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 92–93, 138–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 “In the discourse whereof we did not assume to ourselves any power to determine of any part thereof.” See Tanner, J. R., ed., Constitutional Documents of the Reign of James 1, A.D. 1603–1625 (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 282–83Google Scholar.

17 Echoing the writs, the house reiterated that “arduous and urgent affairs” were “proper subjects and matter of counsel and debate”; See Ibid., pp. 284–85, 289. Sir Robert Cotton's tract “That the Kings of England Have been please Usually to Consult with their Peeres in the Great Councell, and Commons in Parliament, of Marriage, Peace, and Warre,” dates from 1621. See his Cottoni Posthumi (London, 1651), pp. 11–39Google Scholar.

18 See Russell, , Parliaments and English Politics, pp. 150–51Google Scholar, for a manuscript dialogue associated with Sir Robert Phelips, which may report this undertaking not to harm a member “if he risked debating matters of state.”

19 Tanner, ed., pp. 296–302.

20 Gardiner, S. R., ed., The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625–1660, 3d ed., rev. (Oxford, 1906), p. 3Google Scholar.

21 Ibid., pp. 4–5.

22 Sir Edward Coke, whose commitment to the judicial image of Parliament was complete, also comfortably viewed Parliament as the common council of the kingdom and its members as counsellors. See his The Fourth Part of the Institutes (London, 1804), pp. 2, 3Google Scholar. Coke was sufficiently disturbed by the ambiguities of curia that he regarded the word as a homograph for two distinct words, each with its own etymology. The sense of palatium regium Coke believed came from the Greek, the judicial meaning from cura; see the proemium.

23 SirFilmer, Robert, Patriarcha and Other Writings, ed. Sommerville, Johann P. (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 59–64Google Scholar. The iconoclastic Filmer also pricked the balloon of parliamentary privilege (pp. 55–56).

24 Foster, , “The Painful Labour” (n. 4 above), p. 36Google Scholar.

25 “A true presentation” (n. 6 above), pp. 51, 52. Anyone familiar with the troubles of Arthur Hall would have trod lightly.

26 Divine and Politike Observations ([Amsterdam], 1638), p. 13Google Scholar.

27 For this, see Mendle, Michael, “The Ship Money Case, The Case of Shipmony, and the Development of Henry Parker's Parliamentary Absolutism,” Historical Journal 32, no. 3 (1989): 525, 531Google Scholar. See also [Parker, Henry], The Case of Shipmony ([London], 1640), pp. 35–36, 38Google Scholar, A Discourse Concerning Puritans ([London], 1640), pp. 48–49Google Scholar.

28 Kenyon (n. 1 above), pp. 201–4. Fletcher, Anthony, The Outbreak of the English Civil War (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, reemphasizes the importance of the Ten Propositions.

29 No less at risk was the political investment made in turning the traditional enemy into the fraternal protector. If the really dangerous plot came from the erstwhile anti-Laudian ally, the cherished Popish Plot would have to give way to a Protestant one. Hibbard, Caroline M., Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1983), p. 235Google Scholar, writes allusively of “Scottish betrayal” as an alternative to the Popish Plot; Russell, Conrad, “The First Army Plot of 1641,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 38 (1988): 102–3Google Scholar, points to repeated attempts to make the Scots neutrals. See also Russell, Conrad, The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637–1642 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 350–51Google Scholar.

30 The Copy of a Letter Sent from the Earle of Holland to an Honourable Lord, at the Parliament ([London], 1641), pp. 5–6Google Scholar.

31 The earl of Holland to Sir John Banckes, August 13, 1641, House of Lords Record Office.

32 The earl of Holland to the Speaker of the House of Lords, August 16, 1641, House of Lords Record Office. Holland pointed out that Berwick was the furthest point of exit the Scots could take and “least Commodious” for the Scots' access to their own country. A disputed cache of arms was located in Berwick. The Scots earlier had notified the Lords of their intention to cross at Berwick, claiming recent rains had prevented another crossing, a point disputed by Holland; see also Lords Journal (LJ), 4, no. 357: 361–63Google Scholar.

33 Public Record Office (PRO), State Paper (SP) 16/483/62, 16/483/70, 16/483/74, 16/483/96.

34 PRO, SP 16/483/79, 82, 91, 96.

35 Compare, however, Hibbard, p. 211. Professor Hibbard links the fears of Scottish reversal with royalist hopes for a third force (a native royalist party) in Scotland.

36 Edward Nicholas took the political effects of the rumors quite seriously, and wanted the king to dispel them. See Evelyn, John, Diary and Correspondence, ed. Bray, William, 4 vols. (London, 1872), 4:52Google Scholar (Nicholas to the king, August 23, 1641).

37 [Buchanan, David], A Short and True Relation of Some Main Passages of Things (wherein the Scots are Particularly concerned) (London, 1645), pp. 18–20Google Scholar; the text in [Buchanan, David], Truth Its Manifest, or a Short and True Relation (London, 1645), pp. 18–20Google Scholar, is identical. In his important though unpublished French history, Buchanan wrote of five (rather than four) northern counties; [Buchanan, David], L'histoire Veritable de ces Derniers Troubles (n.p., n.d.), pt. 2, pp. 97–98, 104Google Scholar. See George Thomason's note to his copy of the tract.

38 [Fiennes, Nathaniel and/or Fiennes, William, Say, viscount and Seale, ], Vindiciae Veritatis (London, 1654), p. 27Google Scholar; attribution to Say alone is made by Adamson, John S., “The Vindiciae Veritatis and the Political Creed of Viscount Saye and Sele,” Historical Research 60 (1987): 45–63Google Scholar. Pearl, Valerie, “The ‘Royal Independents’ in the English Civil War,” Transactions Of The Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 18 (1968): 93Google Scholar, entertained “little doubt” that the tract was a joint production of Say and his son Nathaniel Fiennes.

39 H[enry] Parker, Scotlands Holy War (London, 1651), p. 3Google Scholar. In October Charles employed a few elements of the partially disbanded Covenanting army in the “Incident,” his half-hearted attempt at a coup in Scotland; see Stevenson, David, The Scottish Revolution, 1637–1644 (New York, 1974), pp. 223–27, 238Google Scholar.

40 Fletcher, , Outbreak, 58Google ScholarPubMed; BL, Harl. MS 479, fol. 139a, b.

41 BL, Harl. MS 479, fol. 160a (August 16).

42 BL, Harl. MS 479, fol. 164b (August 18).

43 BL, Harl. MS 479, fols. 140b, 141a (August 9); LJ, 4:356 (August 10). For a discussion of the custos regni, see Russell, , The Fall of the British Monarchies (n. 29 above), pp. 365–66Google Scholar.

44 BL, Harl. MS 5047, fol. 55a.

45 BL, Harl. MS 479, fol. 158b (August 16); BL Harl. 164, fol. 32b (August 16).

46 LJ, 4:238, 251. In this case the Lords' action was colored by their status as a court of record.

47 Coke (n. 22 above), pp. 24–25. As Professor Foster has noted, Coke's examples all were of ordinances made by king and lords, or (so Coke held) by the king, lords temporal, and the Commons: Foster, Elizabeth Read, “The House of Lords and Ordinances, 1641–1649,” American Journal of Legal History 21 (1977): 158CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Yale, D. E. C., ed., Sir Matthew Hole's The Prerogatives of the King (London, 1976), p. 175Google Scholar.

49 Holdsworth, W. S., A History of English Law, 17 vols. (Boston, 1924), 4:99, n. 7Google Scholar. In Maitland, F. W., The Constitutional History of England (Cambridge, 1920), p. 256Google Scholar, proclamations are considered to be an example of “a certain ordaining power” of the king. See Larkin, ed. (n. 5 above), p. v: “The definition of a royal proclamation remains the same: an ordinance by the King by virtue of his royal prerogative, after Privy Council action, passed by royal warrant under the Great Seal, entered on the Patent Rolls, printed by The King's Printer, and published in certain places by royal writ of proclamation.” Compare the earlier definitions in Larkin, James F. and Hughes, Paul L., eds., Stuart Royal Proclamations, Volume 2: Royal Proclamations of King James I, 1603–1625 (Oxford, 1973), pp. viii–xiGoogle Scholar; and Hughes, Paul L. and Larkin, James F., eds., Tudor Royal Proclamations, 3 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 1964), 1:xxiiiGoogle Scholar.

50 Filmer (n. 23 above), p. 59. For Filmer the distinction between proclamation and statute “originally … was not great.” According to Filmer, a statute was made by the king in parliament, “the common council of the kingdom,” while a proclamation was made by the king with “the advice only of his great council of the peers, or of his privy council only.” Both were equally binding, and both the freely revocable personal will of the king.

51 See, e.g., Larkin, ed., vol. 2, nos. 39, 47, 89, 107, 314, 329, 448, 509. The fast proclaimed for February 18, 1629 (no. 107), was called on the petition of the two houses, as had been earlier, similar fasts; the fast for November 11, 1640 (no. 314), on the “humble advice” of both houses of Parliament.

52 A Proclamation for Obedience to Be Given to His Majesties Captain Generall…, BL, 669 f.3 (8) (June 28, 1641; Larkin, ed., no. 319); An Ordinance of Parliament for a Day of Publike Thanksgiving, BL, 669 f.3 (12) (August 27, 1641). There is a later version, also printed by Barker, but with fewer resemblances to a royal proclamation (BL, 669 f.3 [13]). This version includes an addendum to the original ordinance: see LJ, 4:383. Barker frequently printed official papers of the houses of Parliament at this time.

53 BL, Harl. MS 164, fol. 81b.

54 In May 1641, the Lords prepared a proclamation summoning the army plotters to the Upper House; the proclamation was to be issued by the king “by the Advice of the said Lords in Parliament” (LJ, 4:238); House of Lords Record Office, House of Lords Book of Orders and Ordinances, November 9, 1640–September 14, 1641, pp. 219–29; Russell, Conrad, “The First Army Plot of 1641” (n. 29 above), p. 106Google Scholar. Other proclamations were issued on the advice of both houses. In addition to the quasiceremonial, hence possibly trivial proclamation for a fast (cited in n. 47 above), and the not altogether dissimilar proclamations for enforcing the laws against recusants (Larkin, ed., vol. 2, no. 62, cf. no. 317), one proclamation of November 1640 was issued on the advice of the Privy Council and the motion of both houses (no. 316), and all four proclamations issued in June-August 1641 were made “by the advice of his Parliament” (nos. 319–22).

55 The council met several times during the king's absence and did precisely this: Privy Council Registers Preserved in the Public Record Office Reproduced in Facsimile (London, 1968), 12:178–96Google Scholar. The committees of both houses who were to meet during the recess of Parliament were charged with responsibility to control riot and tumult, a traditional responsibility of the abolished Star Chamber and the Privy Council: PRO, SP 16/484/18.

56 One ordinance hastened the flow of funds necessary to disband Holland's army, short-circuiting the legislatively mandated path of poll money from the sheriffs of several counties to the chamber of London and ordering the sums paid directly to the army treasurer at York (where the money was to have ended up anyway) (LJ, 4:375). The army treasurer was to issue quittances for the sheriffs to present to the chamber treasurers. This was virtually the same thing the house had done by an “order” of August 18 requiring the sheriff of Hampshire to disburse money directly to Colonel Goring.

57 LJ, 4:385.

58 BL, Harl. MS 164, fol. 70a (August 27). D'Ewes remarked that an ordinance “in the elder times” bound only the members of the houses. He pertinently examined and dismissed the parallel with the pulling down of an adjoining house in case of fire and the disarming and restraining of an armed man; the legality of those measures “for avoiding publicke danger” pertained to “certaine and evident” cases, not the “generall grounds” of the recusancy ordinance. The Act of Proclamations (31 Henry 8, c. 8) specifically excluded from the scope of proclamations the seizure of subjects' property and the taking of their lives. Though the act was repealed in 1547, these restrictions continued to be cited as the prevailing common-law wisdom.

59 BL, Harl. MS 164, fols. 70a, 78b–79a. Whether Marten meant that ordinances were as omnicompetent as parliamentary acts or merely as binding is not absolutely clear. D'Ewes took him at his most extreme.

60 Compare Larkin, ed. (n. 5 above), 2:418–20 (no. 182: “A Proclamation commanding all Our Subjects, being Seamen and Ship-wrights, in the service of any forreigne Prince or State, to returne home within a certaine time”). Sir Matthew Hale considered the king's power by proclamation to “license or prohibit passage of men beyond the seas” as a matter “wherein the king is solely entrusted in point of government”: Yale, ed. (n. 48 above), p. 173. The granting of such licenses was just the sort of business that the council routinely handled in meetings that the king did not attend.

61 LJ, 4:394. The instructions stated that the king had earlier given the houses the power of consent in the matter of the Spanish troops.

62 The houses were engaged at the time in a difficult dispute over contrary instructions for religious observance. Probably the ordinance would have received more careful scrutiny in other circumstances. Revealingly, though mistakenly, Henry Cogan described the Commons' instructions of religion of September 9 as an “ordinance of Parliament”: PRO, SP 16/484/20.

63 BL, Harl. MS 164, fols. 95b, 97a, 100b, 105a–107b (Grays' transcript on deposit at Yale Center for Parliamentary History); BL, Harl. MS 5047, fol. 83a.

64 See Hibbard (n. 29 above), pp. 210–13.

65 Evelyn (n. 36 above), 4:60 (Nicholas to the king, August 31, 1641); see also p. 64 (Nicholas to the king, September 15, 1641). Charles apostiled his comments in the margins of Nicholas's letters.

66 Yale, ed., p. 93; see also pp. 106–32. Hale also saw the great officers of state as remedies of the same inevitable “defect.”

67 Hale also treated (Ibid., pp. 133–34) magna concilia that were not parliaments. These lacked the power to make law, but had the jurisdiction of a parliamentary house of lords. Commoners may have been summoned; Hale equivocated on the significance of the appearance of the commons.

68 Hale comes just short of saying that the king is obliged to follow his judges' advice (Ibid., p. 107): “a s [the judges] were bound to advise the king, so the king by their advice dispenseth the ordinary justice of the kingdom … he neither speaks nor doth anything in the public administration of this realm bu t what h e doth by these or some of them.” Similar caution marks Hale's dictum that the king is “regularly” bound by his own laws (pp. 176–77).

69 Larkin and Hughes, ed. (n. 49 above), 1:viii, include “advice” in their definition of proclamation; according to Hughes and Larkin, ed. (n. 49 above), 1:24, an early Tudor proclamation “involves, at least in principle, the advice of the King's council.”

70 Aylmer's remark that the kings of England did not have the sole disposing of matters of war and peace makes no sense except as a reference to limitation by the council rather than by the parliament; see Aylmer, John, An Harborowe for Faithfull and Trewe Subiects (Strasburg [London], 1559), sig. H4rGoogle Scholar.

71 [Hyde, Edward], Transcendent and Multiplied Rebellion and Treason, Discovered, by the Lawes of the Land ([Oxford], 1645), p. 15Google Scholar; Hyde elsewhere (pp. 4–5) conflates the judges (counselors at Law) and counselors of state, viewing them, rather than the House of Lords (considered as a legislative chamber), as the middle term in the balance of One, Few, and Many.

72 I owe this point to a list of citations from the charters drawn for my use by Professor Forrest McDonald and Ellen McDonald, to whom I am grateful. See Thorpe, Francis Newton, ed., The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws, 7 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1906; reprint, 1977), 1:71, 521, 531, 560Google Scholar; 3:1679, 1853, 1864, 1865, 1868, 1879; 5:2535, 2755, 2756, 2760–61, 2764, 3037, 3050, 3057; 6:3214.

73 Private Journals I (n. 1 above), p. 105. This was in committee at Grocers' Hall.

74 Commons Journal (CJ), 2:395Google Scholar.

75 Husbands, Edward, comp., An Exact Collection (London, 1643), p. 61Google Scholar.

76 CJ, 2:406; Private Journals I, pp. 551–52.

77 CJ, 2:408–9; LJ, 4:559–60. Charles replied by asking for a specification of limits (a delaying tactic and also a way of pointing out how far the petition reached); CJ, 2:416; LJ, 4:566; Private Journals I, pp. 315, 322, 323–25, 327, 330–33.

78 CJ, 2:420–23, 431; LJ, 4:567–72.

79 Private Journals I, p. 229, 237, 287, 298, 302, 309–15, 318–22.

80 Private Journals I, p. 310.

81 See the ordinance in any version and also the resolution of February 1 (CJ, 2:407) declaring “whosoever advised” the king to reject the militia petition was “an Enemy to the publick Peace and Safety of the Kingdom.”

82 Private Journals I (n. 1 above), p. 313. The context here was the exclusion of the bishops from the House of Lords; this was the other and closely related part of the leadership's program to purge and tame the upper house into compliance. Marten exceeded the general sentiment in arguing that the king's vote was included in those of the upper house since he chose the peers, quite as the commons of England were represented by those whom they chose to sit in the lower house.

83 CJ, 2:434–35.

84 LJ, 4:609–10; Private Journals I, p. 397.

85 CJ, 2:459–60.

86 CJ, 2:460. The Lords accepted these resolutions in the afternoon; LJ, 4:620.

87 Private Journals I, p. 482. SirVerney, Ralph, Verney Papers: Notes of Proceedings in the Long Parliament temp. Charles I, ed. Bruce, John, Camden Society Publication no. 31, 1st ser. (London, 1845), p. 184Google Scholar; this entry is in cipher. For the key, see Mendle, Michael, Dangerous Positions (University, Ala., 1985), p. 224, n. 24Google Scholar.

88 CJ, 2:463, 464 (March 1, 2); LJ, 4:620–22; Private Journals I, 494–96. The curtness of the king's reply, in which he insisted he had at least as much reason to suspect the houses as they did the king, stunned the Commons.

89 Some preliminary steps towards execution were undertaken before publication: LJ, 4:622, CJ, 2:464. The final step in the promulgation of militia ordinance was taken March 5.

90 CJ, 2:476; Husbands, comp. (n. 75 above), p. 91. This point closely mimicked debates within the house and probably reflected Hyde's judgment of the most effective form of resistance.

91 Husbands, comp., p. 110 (king's declaration of March 9 at Newmarket); LJ, 4:640–41.

92 CJ, 2:479. The Private Journals of the Long Parliament, 7 March to 1 June 1642, ed. Snow, Vernon F. and Young, Anne Steele (New Haven, Conn., 1987), pp. 41–44Google Scholar (hereafter Private Journals II). D'Ewes confusedly argued that, while the ordinance did not have the force of law, men “ought” to obey it “voluntarily, willingly, and cheerfully.” He also cited emergency seizures of a sort much bandied about by royalists in the ship money case; in the summer (see n. 52 above) D'Ewes found those analogies faulty. For the ship money case arguments and their connection with parliamentarian throught, see Mendle, “The Ship Money Case” (n. 27 above).

93 LJ, 4:646.

94 Charles' reply came so quickly that it was suspected that he had immediate inside intelligence (or else, as it was snidely put in the journal, the king had “a prophetical spirit”). Foster, , “The House of Lords and Ordinances, 1641–1649” (n. 47 above), p. 161, n. 11Google Scholar; LJ, 4:646–47; CJ, 2:481.

95 Some members tried fruitlessly to include the king by speaking of “parliament” rather than the two houses; CJ, 2:481, 486–87; LJ, 4:650; Private Journals II, pp. 48, 55–56, 60; Husbands, comp., p. 114.

96 Husbands, comp., p. 126.

97 Ibid., pp. 171, 196–97, 207, 265.

98 Ibid., p. 267.

99 Ibid., pp. 268, 270, 277.

100 Ibid., pp. 250–51; cf. pp. 285, 287.

101 Ibid., p. 146.

102 Ibid., p. 287.

103 Some Few Observations upon his Majesties late Answer [London, 1642], pp. 2–4, 8–9Google Scholar.

104 Ibid., pp. 6–7.

105 Ibid., pp. 9–12, 21, 30, 33.

106 Ibid., pp. 28, 34, 35.

107 Ibid., p. 25.

108 Ibid., pp. 5, 8, 16.

109 [SirSpelman, John], The Case of Our Affairs (n.p., 1643, reprint, Exeter, 1975), p. 12Google Scholar. See also [Hyde] (n. 71 above), p. 4.

110 Sommerville, , “Ideology, Property and the Constitution” (n. 6 above), pp. 47–71Google Scholar, and Politics and Ideology in England, 1603–1640 (London, 1986)Google Scholar.

111 Russell, Conrad, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990), chap. 6Google Scholar. See also Russell's, The Fall of the British Monarchies (n. 29 above), pp. 478–87Google Scholar, for his views of the war of words and other matters discussed here.

112 Some of these matters are discussed in my essay “Parliamentary Sovereignty: A Very English Absolutism,” to appear in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, edited by Quentin Skinner and Nicholas Phillipson (Cambridge, in press).

113 Russell, , The Causes of the English Civil War, pp. 132–33, 151Google Scholar.

114 Ibid., pp. 142–44. Russell has further developed his views in “Issues in the House of Commons, 1621–1629: Predictors of Civil War Allegiance,” Albion 23 (1991): 23–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see esp. 26–27 on the inability of Civil War parliamentarians to lay claim to the rule of law.