Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/24

8 Parliament the dangers confronting England arose from assumption of undue power by the king, the bishops, and the judges. The twelve common-law justices at Westminster in their answer to the king’s question regarding the lawfulness of ship money had Jaid down the principle that the king, in case of a great and declared necessity, of the imminence of which he alone was judge, might require financial aid of his subjects without the intervention of a parliament. Subjected to such interpretation every law and liberty of the English people lay at the mercy of the king’s whim. “Such Art,” said a parliamentary pamphleteer, “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.” One of the judges, Robert Berkeley, had expressed himself more bluntly than his fellows. On one occasion he had asserted that in certain cases judges on the bench were above an act of Parliament; on another he had announced “that there was a Rule of Law, and a Rule of Government, and that many things which might not be done by the Rule of Law, might be done by the Rule of Government.” The king himself, in a declaration published at the dissolution of the Short Parliament, had denounced