Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I LAYING DOWN THE LAW: 600–1500
- PART II CONFLICT OF LAWS: 1500–1766
- 10 The King's Conscience, the Lord Chancellor's Foot
- 11 Star Chamber: Keeping England in Quiet
- 12 Troture
- 13 The Writ and Charter of Liberty
- 14 Rex Lex v. Lex Rex: Sir Edward Coke
- 15 Oedipus Lex: The Trial of Charles I
- 16 Free-born John
- 17 From Restoration to Revolution and Reaction
- PART III THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE LAW
- PART IV THE RULE OF LAW: 1907–2014
- Bibliography
- Index
17 - From Restoration to Revolution and Reaction
from PART II - CONFLICT OF LAWS: 1500–1766
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2015
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I LAYING DOWN THE LAW: 600–1500
- PART II CONFLICT OF LAWS: 1500–1766
- 10 The King's Conscience, the Lord Chancellor's Foot
- 11 Star Chamber: Keeping England in Quiet
- 12 Troture
- 13 The Writ and Charter of Liberty
- 14 Rex Lex v. Lex Rex: Sir Edward Coke
- 15 Oedipus Lex: The Trial of Charles I
- 16 Free-born John
- 17 From Restoration to Revolution and Reaction
- PART III THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE LAW
- PART IV THE RULE OF LAW: 1907–2014
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
If Not Guilty be not a verdict, then you make of the Jury and Magna Charta but a mere nose of wax.
William Penn (ST, II)The Habeas Corpus Acts declare no principle and define no rights, but they are for practical purposes worth a hundred constitutional articles guaranteeing individual liberty.… These Acts are of really more importance not only than the general proclamations of the Rights of Man which have often been put forward in foreign countries, but even than such very lawyer-like documents as the Petition of Right or the Bill of Rights.
A. V. Dicey, Lecture Introductory to the Study of the LawOne major legacy of Lilburne's forensic forays was confirmed and rein forced in the Restoration period. In 1670 the principle of the independence of the jury came once more to the fore in Bushell's Case. Jury independence had never been sacrosanct. Star Chamber had punished recalcitrant juries for a century and a half, and even after its demise in 1641 common law judges continued penalising jurors, particularly during the 1660s. But had they such power? John Kelyng, Chief Justice of the King's Bench from 1665 to 1671, thought so. He was ‘an unbending representative of public power, who showed little patience for supposed English traditions of liberty that interfered with the administration of criminal justice’. Once he was denounced in parliament for quoting Cromwell in calling Magna Carta ‘Magna Farta’, words he initially denied but later admitted he might have said. He favoured compelling jurors to convict not only in cases involving religious dissent but in cases of homicide – although in this he may have been trying to protect apprentices from being beaten to death by their masters. Recalcitrant jurors he would fine or imprison.
The issue came to a head when the ‘Cavalier Parliament’ determined to exact revenge on religious dissent.
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- Law, Liberty and the ConstitutionA Brief History of the Common Law, pp. 157 - 170Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2015