Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 54

The seventeenth century was an age when conscious and deliberate political theory entered the arena of practical politics. At the same time there were undoubtedly important economic factors which played a large part in the conflict. Religion also added endless complications to an already baffling situation. Elizabeth held the reins of Church and State, but the Church itself had been based upon a denial of tradition and authority; the Church consequently had no answer to fresh denials, save to shelter behind the throne. To an extraordinary extent public thought was turning to various forms of sectarianism, and speculation very frequently took the form of theological controversy. The theory of the State was less developed. The age of the Tudors and of the Reformation had for the moment carried practice far ahead of political theory, and the pressing business of administration had overshadowed the more sober business of law. The great names in the age of Elizabeth are not those of lawyers or of judges, but of councillors and secretaries. Against the administrative State there was bound to be a reaction, especially when the nation began to doubt the wisdom of the policies pursued. The spirit of theological questioning was to be extended to the State, and so the uncertainty of the foundations of religion, and the breakdown of the old theories of ecclesiastical authority in the established church, resulted inevitably in the bewilderment of those who sought for the foundations of the State as well. In the end, attempts were made to use the few remnants of mediaeval thinking. The Crown naturally turned to the doctrine of the divine right of Kings, but interpreted it in a narrow sense which a mediaeval philosopher would hardly have recognised. In this way the old doctrine of the divine origin of civil government became restricted to a particular form of government, that is to say, a monarchy, and to a particular section of that form, the King himself. In opposition to all this, the revival of the common law brought back a view which more nearly represented the mediaeval attitude. This view was drawn to a large extent from the pages of our greatest mediaeval lawyer, Bracton, whose celebrated work on the laws of England was first printed in 1569 and again in 1640. In this book Sir Edward Coke and other common lawyers found the simple mediaeval doctrine of the supremacy of law. In an alleged altercation between James I and the great Chief Justice the issue was clearly expressed: James, by his prerogative, claimed to be above the law by divine right, and to this Coke replied by quoting the memorable words of Bracton: “The King is subject not to men, but to God and the law.”¹ In other words, Coke was prepared to revive the age-old dogma that law, divine in its origin and sanction, is the basis upon which civil society is built, and that this law is supreme above King and people equally. The theory of the divine right of Kings, on the other hand, ascribed this religious character to one branch only of the machinery of government, the King. Soon it became evident that there was danger of the latter doctrine combining with the newer notions of the State (resembling somewhat the theories of irresponsibility which a later age was to produce), to create thereby a sort of “Leviathan”—to use the later term of Hobbes. Regarded in this light, the conflict of theory between Crown and Parliament is one between the mediaeval view of a paramount divine law, supreme over every aspect of government, and an attempt to transfer this divine sanction to a monarch who is also to embody the State in the more modern aspect of the word. From this point of view, Parliament represents the conservative side and the Crown the side of innovation. From another angle, however, the positions might appear to be reversed. When it came to the details of the actual powers which the Crown had exercised in the past independently of parliamentary control, it was a plausible argument for the Crown to insist that it was, in fact, basing its position upon mediaeval precedent. This was particularly true on various matters of indirect taxation which the middle ages had left in great obscurity. In asserting control over these matters, the House of Commons laid itself open to historical arguments of considerable force, which would have been stronger still if the Crown had been able to secure the services of antiquaries as learned and zealous as those of the parliamentary party. Even so, when it came to the judicial interpretation of mediaeval precedents, the courts more than once had to find for the Crown—and we are at perfect liberty to assert that the judges who made these decisions reached them honestly and properly upon the historical evidence available to them, although they often spoilt the effect by gratuitously introducing a good deal of dogma on divine right. The historians of a later age, imbued with partisan spirit, have certainly exaggerated their wholesale accusations of subserviency against the Stuart judges. From this point of view, therefore, it is the Crown which seems conservative and Parliament the innovator. However, the Commons were fortunate in possessing several antiquaries of truly prodigious learning; William Prynne, for example, had read enormous quantities of mediaeval rolls. Sources which are voluminous even in modern reprints and abstracts, Prynne could quote at great length from the original manuscripts, which he had studied by candlelight in the dank vaults of the Tower. Only those who have had to spend many hours with mediaeval records can appreciate the immensity of his labours. As we have already mentioned, the ambiguous rolls of the fifteenth-century Parliaments were a particularly rich mine for the opposition, being easily susceptible of interpretations in their favour.