Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/31

Rh cord of king and people. The wits of parliamentary orators and writers were exhausted in the search for quaint conceits to illustrate this relation: Parliaments were beds of reconciliation; as in the natural body the head and the members were one, so in the Parliament the kingdom and the king were knit into one body politic, and had but one will and one purpose.

Having such exalted notions of the dignity of parliaments, the Long Parliament was sharp in its prosecution of those who in the era of personal government had infringed on parliamentary functions. This was true notably in the cases of Strafford and Laud, the men who in their practice had most notoriously departed from the rule of law to follow after the rule of government. Parliament found like offenders in the judges and in the clergy in convocation. The judges, it held, had abused to the advantage of the prerogative their function of declaring the law of the land, when