Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/28

12 Accordingly, the leaders of the Long Parliament in opposing the extensions of the prerogative based their arguments on the fundamental laws of the land. In Strafford’s case, John Pym represented as treason the attempting to subvert the fundamental laws of the land; for since those laws determined at once the prerogative of the king and the liberty of the subject, an attempt to subvert them involved stripping the king of his legal right to his prerogative; and as the prerogative was designed for the king’s protection, such subversion amounted to compassing his death. Said Pym in summing up against the Earl of Strafford:

It was easier for Pym to assert the existence of these laws than to say where they were to be found. Certainly, Magna Charta, confirmed above thirty