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
10 - The King's Conscience, the Lord Chancellor's Foot
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
Reason to rule, but mercy to forgive;
The first is law, the last prerogative.
Dryden, The Hind and the PantherIf the parties will at my hands call for justice, then, all were it my father stood on the one side and the Devil on the other, his cause being good, the Devil should have right.
Sir Thomas More (Roper, The Life of Sir Thomas More)The social turmoil occasioned by the Wars of Roses, and the time it took for the new Tudor dynasty to assert its supremacy, unsettled the rule of law. To what extent is open to debate, but it was the perception at the time. Since the 1460s, maintained Richard III's parliament, the realm had been ‘ruled by self-will and pleasure, fear and dread’, and ‘all manner of equity and laws [had been] laid apart and despised’. For chaos to be banished and order imposed, for the law to be enforced, and for justice to be administered, a strong central authority was needed. The Tudor dynasty provided this, but the measures successive monarchs took to maintain law and order and the way they took them could also threaten the integrity of the common law. The exercise of the royal prerogative enabled effective and decisive government under the Tudors – who were adept at increasing the power of the Crown without seeming to endanger the constitutional balance or the rule of law – but under the less astute Stuarts engendered unease over the extent of arbitrary royal power.
The prerogative was exercised out with parliament or the common law courts. It was necessary that the Crown retained some undefined executive power to deal with unforeseen and unforeseeable contingencies of administration and with political crises. But prerogative unrestrained smacked of the Roman imperial tradition and despotic theocratic monarchy, rather than the more contractual ‘Germanic’ kingship championed in England since Magna Carta or before.
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- Law, Liberty and the ConstitutionA Brief History of the Common Law, pp. 97 - 102Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2015