grounded all obedience on the people’s part, upon that mutuall stipulation which the king and his subjects make at his Coronation. Where the king takes an explicite solemne oath to mainteine the antient lawes and liberties of the kingdome, and so to rule and governe all his people according to those lawes established; consequently and implicitely all the people of the land doe sweare fealtie, allegiance, subjection and obedience to their king, and that according to his just lawes, pag. 39. Your inference from hence is this, that if the king so solemnely by sacred oath, ratified againe in Parliament under his royall hand, doe bind himselfe to maintaine the lawes of his kingdome, and therein the rights and liberties of his subjects, then how much are the people bound to yeeld all subjection and obedience to the king, according to his just lawes, p. 40.
So that according to your doctrine, the people is no longer to obey the king, than the king keepes promise with the people. Nay of the two the people have the better bargaine; the king being sworne explicitely and solemnely to maintaine their liberties; the people only consequently and implicitely to yeeld him subjection. Is not this excellent doctrine think you? Or could the most seditious person in a state have thought upon a shorter cut to bring all to Anarchie; for if the subject please to misinterpret the king’s proceedings, and thinke though falsely, that he hath not kept his promise with them: they are released ipso facto from all obedience and subjection, and that by a more easie way, than suing out a dispensation in the Court of Rome. You tell us, p. 129. of the king’s free subjects; and here you have found out a way to make them so: a way to make the subject free, and the king a subject; and hard it is to say whether of the two be the greater Contradiction in adjecto. I have before heard of a free people, and of free states, but never till of late a free subject: nor know I any way to create free subjects, but by releasing them of all obedience to their Princes. And I have read too of Eleuthero Cilices, which were those people of Cilicia that were not under the command of any king: but never reade of an Eleuthero Britannus, nor I hope never shall. I will but aske you one question, and so end this point. You presse the king’s oath very much about maintaining of the lawes of the Kingdom, as pag. 39. 40. and 42. before recited, as also, pag. 72. againe and againe, and finally in your addresse to my Lords the Judges. Is it by way of Commemoration or of Exprobration? If of Commemoration, you forget the Rule; memorem immemorem facit, qui monet quae memor meminit.11 But if of Exprobration, what meant you, when you needed not to tell us, that in a point of Civill Government, it is a dangerous thing to change a Kingdom setled on good lawes into a tyranny; and presently thereon to adde a certaine speech of Heraclitus, viz. That citizens ought to fight no lesse for their lawes, than for their walls. I only aske the question, take you time to answere it.
Henry Parker, one of the most prolific writers in the cause of Parliament in the civil war era, has also been dubbed the clearest and most realistic. A graduate of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, he was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1637. Parker quickly put his talents to work in support of the Presbyterian, and later the Independent, opponents of the Crown. During the civil war and Interregnum Parker held a series of important posts for Parliament. He served as secretary to Parliament’s army under the Earl of Essex, then in 1645 as secretary to the House of Commons where he prepared various declarations, and finally as secretary to Cromwell’s army in Ireland. He died in Ireland late in 1652, aged forty-eight.
Parker was renowned among his contemporaries and is recognized among modern historians as one of Parliament’s most important theorists. His first published tract, the anonymous “The Case of Shipmony Briefly Discoursed” reprinted here, was prepared for presentation to the Long Parliament on the day it convened. Three editions appeared. It is not only a vigorous denunciation of a levy widely condemned as an abuse of the royal prerogative but underlines for us the grave constitutional threat contemporaries saw in shipmoney itself and, even more, in the legal reasoning with which the royal judges had upheld it. With crystal clarity Parker forges the link between political grievance and constitutional menace. The Long Parliament went on to outlaw shipmoney.
The Case of Ship-Money Briefly Discoursed.
Great Fires happening in Townes or Cities, are sometimes the cause that other contiguous houses are spoiled and demolisht, besides those which the flame itselfe seizes. So now, in the case of Shipmoney, not only the judgement itselfe which hath been given against the subject, doth make a great gap and breach in the rights and Franchises of England, but the arguments and pleadings also, which conduced to that judgement, have extended the mischiefe further, and scarce left anything unviolated. Such strange contradiction there hath been amongst the pleaders, and dissent amongst the Judges, even in those Lawes which are most fundamentall, that we are left in a more confused uncertainty of our highest priviledges, and those customes which are most essentiall to Freedome, than we were before. To introduce the legality of the Ship-scot,1 such a prerogative hath been maintained, as destroyes altogether Law, and is incompatible with popular liberty: and such Art hath been used to deny, traverse, avoid, or frustrate the true force, or meaning of all our Lawes and Charters, that if wee grant Ship-money upon these grounds, with Ship-money wee grant all besides. To remove therefore this uncertainty, which is the mother of all injustice, confusion, and publicke dissention, it is most requisite that this grand Councell and Treshault Court2 (of which none ought to thinke dishonourably) would take these Arduis Regni, these weighty and dangerous difficulties, into serious debate, and solemnly end that strife, which no other place of Judicature can so effectually extinguish.
That the King ought to have aid of his subjects in times of danger, and common aid in case of common danger, is laid downe for a ground, and agreed upon by all sides. But about this aid there remaines much variety and contrariety of opinion amongst the greatest Sages of our Law; and the principall points therein controverted, are these foure: First, by what Law the King may compell aid. Secondly, when it is to bee levied. Thirdly, how it is to bee levied. Fourthly, what kinde of aid it must be.
1. Some of the Judges argue from the Law of Nature, that since the King is head, and bound to protect, therefore he