Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/32

16 in the case of ship money they had reversed a previous decision handed down by the High Court of Parliament in the Petition of Right. Convocation had abused its power of declaring the law in matters of religion, when it had prescribed an oath to laymen, and had assumed to define the king’s right to tax his subjects. Both judges and clergy, therefore, stood convicted of having trespassed on the duties of the highest court of the land, the High Court of Parliament.

The constitutional doctrine that Parliament was the final interpreter of the fundamental laws of the land contained, as has been indicated, the germ of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty; and the development of this latter doctrine divided the old constitutional party of the Long Parliament into the two parties that fought the civil war. The development of the doctrine and the divergence of the parties are devious and difficult to trace. Its first official appearance perhaps is the Grand Remonstrance passed November 22, 1641. This is the first public utterance by the narrower party forming around Pym and Hampden that ignores the organic concept of Parliament—the concept that regarded the Parliament as the symbol of the unity of king and people. In ordering the Grand Remonstrance printed, the House of Commons bid against the king for the support of the nation. Clear-headed Royalists saw what it meant and stormed for the right