Petitions and the Petition of Right

1974 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Read Foster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Normal Form ◽  
Martial Law ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
To Receive

Proceedings of parliament, said Sir Edward Coke in 1624, are of four sorts: by bill, judicature, petition of grace and petition of right. The purpose of this paper is to explore certain aspects of procedure by petition in the reigns of James I and Charles I and to consider the Petition of Right of 1628 in relation to other petitions which preceded it.The substance of the Petition of Right is well known. It stated that contrary to the laws of the realm, men had been required under duress to grant loans and pay other charges to the crown which had not been voted by parliament. They had been imprisoned without cause shown, tried by martial law in time of peace, and forced to receive into their homes soldiers and mariners billeted upon them. The Petition asked that these practices, which contravened the rights and liberties of the kingdom, should cease.The form of the Petition, together with its answer, is less well understood than its substance and is often considered unique. It has sometimes been regarded as a declaratory act, sometimes compared to a private bill, or to the petition, also called a petition of right, by which an individual initiated action against the crown. To discover what the Petition meant to men of the seventeenth century, it may be useful first to look at the events that surrounded Charles' several answers to it, and then to examine the petition as a normal form of procedure, of which the Petition of Right was a dramatic example.

BEYOND THE PALE: JOHN CUSACKE AND THE LANGUAGE OF ABSOLUTISM IN EARLY STUART BRITAIN

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
LINDA LEVY PECK
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
Colonial Government

John Cusacke, an Irish gentleman who was educated on the continent and worked on the fringes of the court of wards, constructed a striking re-reading of kingship, law, colonial government, and parliament in a series of tracts written between 1615 and 1647. His writings provide insight both into seventeenth-century colonial theory and early Stuart political thought. Shaped in the cauldron of Irish land struggles and continental political thought, Cusacke rejected Old English constitutionalism, arguing instead that Ireland was a colonial dependency of England. Further, to gain royal favour for various projects, Cusacke recast contemporary conceptions of parliament and common law, rejecting the centrality of custom, insisting that the king was the law maker and vigorously attacking Sir Edward Coke. Cusacke's writings reached the libraries of James I and Charles I, and their officials Sir Robert Naunton, master of the court of wards, and attorney-general Sir Robert Bankes. Cusacke's tracts graphically demonstrate the existence of an absolutist political discourse in early Stuart Britain applied not to issues of theology or of international law but to domestic politics.

Could Charles I Be Trusted? The Royalist Case, 1642-1646

1966 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. W. Daly
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
General Public ◽  
Veto Power ◽  
English History ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
Constitutional Analysis

The followers of King Charles I in the Civil War, long among the whipping boys of English history, have been receiving better treatment since the Whig interpretation of the seventeenth century lost its pristine vigour. This is particularly true of their constitutional position as set forth in the great outpouring of manifestoes and pamphlets during the war. Edward Hyde, perhaps the key figure in this aspect of royalism, has recently profited from a capable defence of his opinions and policy. Similarly, pamphleteers such as Henry Ferne, Dudley Digges, and John Bramhall are now fairly well known, thanks largely to J. W. Allen's pioneering study of their writings. From work like this it is clear that the royalist spokesmen accepted the increased importance of Parliament, the end of prerogative courts and nonparliamentary taxation, and the supremacy of common and statute law. Like their armies in the field, they were defending the monarchy as overhauled in 1641, not as the Tudors left it, much less as James I may have conceived it. Indeed the classical doctrine of the mixed or balanced constitution, glorified by Blackstone and widely accepted until nearly 1830, is now credited, not to Philip Hunton, but to the royalists. Such rehabilitation has done much to remove the patronizing label of “wrong but romantic,” which was once the best which they could hope for from historians or the general public.Allen and those who followed him naturally concentrated on the legal and constitutional analysis of the origins of authority, the veto power, sovereignty, nonresistance, and so forth.

Legislation, Foreign Policy, and the “Proper Business” of the Parliament of 1624

1991 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark E. Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Parliamentary History ◽  
Proper Functions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Parliamentary Politics

A dozen years ago Conrad Russell initiated a major historiographical debate when he rejected the traditional interpretation of seventeenth-century parliamentary history expounded in the classic studies of S. R. Gardiner and Wallace Notestein, whose work on early Stuart parliaments dominated the field for three quarters of a century. According to Russell, Gardiner's and Notestein's conviction that Jacobean and Caroline parliaments were the scene of escalating constitutional conflicts between the Crown and the House of Commons was the result of the two historians' failure to understand either the nature of early Stuart politics or seventeenth-century notions of Parliament's proper functions. Politics in general and parliamentary politics in particular were devoid of ideological content, and the provincial gentry who filled the benches of the House of Commons were as certain as the rest of their countrymen that the “proper business” of Parliament was the passing of bills, not the debating of issues of national or constitutional significance. Russell, of course, did not suggest that the conflicts so crucial to the traditional interpretation were made out of whole cloth, but he did deny that disagreements between Crown and Parliament were due to the emergence of a constitutional opposition. Instead, such disagreements were the inevitable product of the pervasive tension that marked the relationship between the royal government in London and the local communities in the provinces. During the reigns of James I and Charles I, the Crown's incompetent parliamentary management made it more difficult than usual for local gentlemen to reconcile their obligations to their king with their loyalties to their communities. The result was some remarkably unhappy parliaments, but since no important issue of principle divided parliamentary leaders from privy councilors or officers of state, there could be no organized, ideologically based opposition, no constitutional crisis leading inexorably to civil war.

The Baronetcy of the Skellingthorpe Vavasor

1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-312
Author(s):  
Kenneth E. Cutler
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Social History ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Interesting Study ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Made In

On 22 June 1631 the government of Charles I issued Letters Patent proclaiming Captain Sir Charles Vavasor of Skellingthorpe, Lines., a baronet. The grant of honors to Sir Charles Vavasor was among the most distinctive made in England during the seventeenth century. By its special terms, Sir Charles became the first baronet (of approximately 285) to receive rights of precedence—in spite of parliamentary statutes opposing such rights. A clause of precedency declared the title retroactive to 29 June 1611, and that, in turn, made Sir Charles's father, Sir Thomas Vavasor, who had died in 1620, a baronet post mortem. The baronetcy of Sir Charles Vavasor is also unusual as one of the few which did not depend upon the patronage of the Duke of Buckingham, as the only one created during the whole of 1631, and as the last one created before the eve of Civil War.The competition for honors among the gentry is an important element in the social history of early seventeenth century England, and a factor in the complex origins of the Civil War. The full dimensions of that competition can be illuminated by studying the motives of individual families, and the processes by which they achieved their titles. The Skellingthorpe Vavasor make an especially interesting study because of the unusual distinctions which attend their title.Heretofore, however, paucity of evidence made it nearly impossible to reconstruct the quest for honors of the Skellingthorpe Vavasor. The evidence did show that before he died in 1620, Sir Thomas Vavasor sought the title of baronet without success, and that eleven years later, Sir Thomas's son, Charles, finally received a baronetcy with precedency. The intervening years, 1620-1631, had to be filled with conjectures about Charles Vavasor's motives, timing, and patronage, and also with some conjectures about why the government granted him honors of dubious legality.

The Irish courts of law, 1801–1914

1957 ◽  
Vol 10 (40) ◽  
pp. 363-391
Author(s):  
R.B. McDowell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Law Courts ◽  
Court Of Chancery

At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were six superior courts in Ireland—chancery, the three common law courts (king’s bench, common pleas and exchequer), the admiralty court and the prerogative court (an ecclesiastical court with jurisdiction over testamentary matters).Four of these courts were of medieval origin. The exchequer was probably in existence before the close of the twelfth century, the Irish chancery was founded early in the thirteenth century, the first Irish chancellor being appointed in 1244, and the antecedents of the courts of king’s bench and common pleas are to be found in the thirteenth century. The other two courts were comparatively modern. The court of prerogative and faculties based its rights to exercise jurisdiction on two sixteenth century acts and two seventeenth century patents, one of James I and one of Charles I. And though admiralty jurisdiction had been exercised in Ireland from medieval times, the Irish court of admiralty had been created by statute in 1784. From the court of chancery and the three common law courts there was an appeal to the court of error (known as the court of exchequer chamber) composed of the judges of the three common law courts, and in 1857 it was enacted that the court of exchequer chamber when hearing an appeal should consist of the judges of the two courts from which the appeal did not arise. From the admiralty court and from the prerogative court there was an appeal to delegates in chancery.

Buckingham the Masquer

1998 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 59-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean MacIntyre
Keyword(s):  
James I ◽  
Charles I

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (1592-1628), favorite of James I and of Charles I as both prince and king, used skill in dancing, especially in masques, to compete for and retain royal favor. Masques in which he danced and masques he commissioned displayed his power with the rulers he ostensibly served. His example and teaching taught Prince Charles that through masque dancing he might win his father's favor, and probably made Charles believe that his appearance in court masques of the 1630s would similarly win his subjects' favor.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosamund Oates
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
James I ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Turbulent Times ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
The Church

Tobie Matthew (c.1544–1628) lived through the most turbulent times of the English Church. Born during the reign of Henry VIII, he saw Edward VI introduce Protestantism, and then watched as Mary I violently reversed her brother’s changes. When Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558, Matthew rejected his family’s Catholicism to join the fledgling Protestant regime. Over the next sixty years, he helped build a Protestant Church in England under Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I. Rising through the ranks of the Church, he was Archbishop of York in the charged decades leading up to the British Civil Wars. Here was a man who played a pivotal role in the religious politics of Tudor and Stuart England, and nurtured a powerful strain of Puritanism at the heart of the established Church....

‘An old and faithful servand’: A Pair of Early Seventeenth-Century Gauntlet Gloves given by King Charles I to Sir Henry Wardlaw

Costume ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
High Status ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Charles I ◽  
The Social ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
The University ◽  
Design And Manufacture ◽  
Private Collections

A pair of embroidered seventeenth-century gauntlet gloves, reputedly presented by King Charles I to his courtier Sir Henry Wardlaw, was donated to the University of St Andrews in 2001. This article sets out to uncover the truth behind this nearly four-hundred-year-old family legend by investigating Sir Henry’s royal connections and the social significance of the gauntlet gloves as a high-status, luxury clothing accessory. Based on the study of historic gloves in museum and private collections, it endeavours to date the gloves by discussing their design and manufacture within the context of seventeenth-century clothing fashion. This article also explores the symbolism behind the gauntlet gloves’ decorative scheme by unravelling some of the hidden messages that are conveyed about cultural, religious, political and technological developments and perspectives through seventeenth-century embroidery.

‘Stampt with your own Image’

2018 ◽  
pp. 303-318
Author(s):  
B. J. Cook
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Extra Dimension ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles Ii

The most familiar representation of European monarchy in the seventeenth century still remained the coinage. By this time it was unremarkable in itself that a new reign would produce new coin designs, but virtually every Stuart succession involved an extra dimension of some significance, including the accession of a foreign monarch; the restoration of the monarchy; and the joint sovereignty arrangements of William and Mary. Two Stuart reigns, those of James I and Charles II, began with two new coinage redesigns in quick succession, following an initial acknowledgement of the new reign with a more thoroughgoing revision, even though this had the potential to distract from the image and message each had initially established. This chapter reviews how these highly unusual adjustments proceeded and what motives lay behind them.

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