Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/753

 NICHOLAS FULLER: A FORGOTTEX EXPONENT OF EXGLISH LIBERTY Ix 1604, Nicholas Fuller, barrister at law of Gray's Inn. opposed the royal measures in Parliament, and offended the King by his caustic utterances. When the Puritan ministers were deprived in the following year, he sought to block the episc'opal proceedings against them by attempting to transfer their cases to the common law courts. Finally, he impugned the authority of the High Com- mission ; declared it illegal ; denied in fact the existence of the royal prerogative under which the letters patent to the Commissioners had been issued; and maintained his contentions in the face of the High Commission, the common law courts, the Privy Council, and the King himself. Fuller was thus one of the first men of great ability who persistently employed their energy and talents in consti- tutional opposition to the Crown. It is true that Peter 'entworth, in known contravention of Elizabeth's wishes, had demanded liberty of speech in the House of Commons in 1576; that the election of Sir Francis Goodwin to Parliament for Buckinghamshire had fur- nished the pretext for a quarrel between the King and the House of Commons which had momentous constitutional results ; and that two years later, John Bate, a London merchant, took to law the question of the import tax on currants. Yet in none of these cases was there actual constitutional opposition to the Crown. W'ent- worth invoked only an ethical right, Goodwin took no part in the dispute which bears his name, and Bate had requested and had received an authoritative decision of what the law was, but made no further attempt to avoid its application. It remained for Fuller in 1607 to attack the King's prerogative more explicitly. Vhen defeated on one ground, he resumed the struggle upon a second, and then upon a third, until James and Salisbury began to think they would never silence " the graceless rogue ". In truth, he has a place in English constitutional annals and in the long fight of Par- liament against the Crown, because he voiced in his speeches, perhaps for the first time in such unmistakable fashion, the political theories which Hakewill and Coke developed into a system and which Pym and Hampden finally carried to victory in the Long Parliament. 743