Petition of Right
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| Petition of Right | |
 The Petition of Right
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| Ratified | June 7th, 1628 |
| Location | National Archives, London |
The Petition of Right is a major English constitutional document, which sets out specific liberties of the subject that the king is prohibited from infringing. The Petition of Right was produced by the English Parliament in the run-up to the English Civil War. It was passed by Parliament in May, 1628, and given the royal assent by Charles I in June of that year. The Petition is most notable for its confirmation of the principles that taxes can be levied only by Parliament, that martial law may not be imposed in time of peace, and that prisoners must be able to challenge the legitimacy of their detentions through the writ of habeas corpus. Additionally, the Petition's ban on the billeting of troops is reflected in the Third Amendment to the United States Constitution.
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[edit] Background
Parliament passed the Petition of Right in 1628 in response to a number of perceived violations of the law by Charles I in the first years of his reign. In 1626, Charles had convened Parliament in an effort to obtain desperately needed funds for the continuation of his unsuccessful war with Spain. Unhappy with the prosecution of the war, however, Parliament swiftly began impeachment proceedings against Charles' favorite and principal counselor, the Duke of Buckingham. In order to protect Buckingham, Charles was forced to dissolve Parliament before it had voted any subsidies[1]. Left without recourse to parliamentary taxation, Charles resorted to two forms of extra-parliamentary taxation to raise the funds he needed - a benevolence and a Forced Loan - that were of doubtful legality at best. He also began to billet soldiers in civilian homes, both as a cost-saving measure and as a means of punishing his political opponents.
Citing the Forced Loan's illegality, a number of gentlemen refused to pay, and many of them were imprisoned as a result. Ultimately, five of the imprisoned gentlemen - the so-called "Five Knights" (since they were all knights) petitioned the Court of King's Bench for writs of habeas corpus to force the government to specify the reason for their imprisonment. Seeking to avoid a direct challenge of the legality of the Loan, Charles refused to charge the prisoners with a specific crime, instead declaring on the return to the writs that the knights were detained "per speciale mandatum domini regis" ("by special command of our lord the king").[2]
In the resulting hearings before the King's Bench - the famous Five Knights' Case - counsel for the Knights argued that imprisonment by "special command" amounted to a fundamental violation of the the principle of due process established by chapter twenty-nine of Magna Carta, which declared that imprisonment could only occur in accordance with the law of the land. The Five Knights' counsel claimed, therefore, that the king, upon receipt of a writ of habeas corpus, must return a specific cause of detention, the legality of which could be assessed by the courts. In contrast, Robert Heath, the Attorney General, claimed that the king had a prerogative right to imprison by royal command for reasons of state, and these detentions could not be challenged by habeas corpus.
Faced with conflicting precedents, and, undoubtedly, political pressure, the Court decided to remit the Knights to prison while taking the case under advisement. Although equivocal, this decision was taken as a major victory for the king, and a significant blow to the opponents of his extra-legal policies. It was largely a desire to overturn immediately this ruling that would provide the primary impetus for the House of Commons' decision to create the Petition of Right in the subsequent Parliament.[3]
[edit] The Parliament of 1628
Elections for a new Parliament occurred in February and early March, 1628, and Parliament assembled on March 17th. As Charles made clear in his opening speech, his purpose for calling Parliament was supply, and he urged Parliament not to waste time in "tedious consultations."[4] Initially, Parliament began to consider Charles' request for funds, but very quickly shelved this in favor of discussing grievances related to the Forced Loan and the Five Knights' Case. Sir Edward Coke first proposed legislation to overturn the holding in the Five Knights' Case on March 21st, and from that date until the passage of the Petition of Right, consideration of grievances dominated the House of Commons' daily schedule.[5] The debates in the House focused on demonstrating that Charles' actions had been contrary to the existing law - the Commons were wary of appearing to innovate, as doing so would likely be viewed by Charles as an assault on his prerogative. On April 3rd, the House passed four resolutions declaring that imprisonment without cause shown and taxation without consent of parliament were illegal.[6] These resolutions would form the core of the later Petition of Right. Over the course of April, additional grievances concerning billeting of troops and the use of martial law were added to the developing legislation.
On May 6th, the House voted to proceed by way of petition of right rather than by bill, seeing this as the best way to gain a redress of grievances without appearing to overly-threaten the royal prerogative.[7] A draft of the Petition was prepared by the Commons, and sent to the Lords for their approval. The Lords, influenced by letters from Charles opposing the Petition, attempted to insert alterations that would have largely nullified the effect of the Petition. The Commons, however, rejected all but the most insignificant of the Lords’ edits.[8] On May 27th, the Petition was finally approved by both Houses of Parliament and presented to Charles for the royal assent.
Initially, Charles tried to avoid assenting to the Petition, and on June 2nd he unsuccessfully attempted to satisfy the Commons with a simple expression of good intentions. On June 7th, however, the king made a surprising volte-face, and approved the Petition – though with the simultaneous declaration that the Commons “neither mean nor can hurt my prerogative”. Charles’ sudden approval of the Petition was almost certainly influenced by secret conferences he had held with the judges of the central courts in May, in which the judges had hinted that the Petition could not prevent Charles from exercising his prerogatives in the future.[9] Thus, Charles had accepted the Petition without any intention of abiding by it – as would be demonstrated by his conduct during the 1630s.[10]
[edit] Content of the Petition
In enacting the Petition, Parliament sought redress on the following points:
- Taxation without Parliament's consent
- Forced loans
- Arbitrary arrest
- Imprisonment contrary to Magna Carta
- Arbitrary interference with property rights
- Lack of enforcement of habeas corpus
- Forced billeting of troops
- Imposition of martial law
- Exemption of officials from due process
The Petition was largely shaped by the common lawyers in the House of Commons, including notably Sir Edward Coke, John Selden, John Pym, and Sir John Eliot. The Petition is retrospective in nature: it claims to merely reconfirm ancient liberties, rather than establish new rights. Thus, it relies heavily on Magna Carta, the Statutum de tallagio non concedendo of Edward I's reign, and various statutes from the reign of Edward III relating to due process as precedents. Pym even claimed that the rights demanded predated the Norman conquest and had been confirmed by successive kings. In reality, however, the Petition significantly expanded the recognized rights of Englishmen. The King was under great financial pressure, and agreed to the Petition in June. In practice, however, Charles failed to abide by the limitations of the Petition (see, for example, Ship Money and the trial of John Hampden). The Petition's limitation of military law jurisdiction prevented William III from disciplining rebellious troops during the Glorious Revolution requiring the passage of the Mutiny Act in 1689.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics 1621-1629, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 267-322 passim.
- ^ Roger Lockyer, The Early Stuarts (New York: Longman, 1989), 220-224.
- ^ Russell, 334-335.
- ^ Robert C. Johnson et al., eds., Commons Debates 1628, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 2.
- ^ Ibid, 45.
- ^ Ibid, 291.
- ^ Commons Debates 1628, vol. 3, 280.
- ^ Russell, 371-374.
- ^ Commons Debates 1628, vol. 6, 46.
- ^ Russell, 383.
[edit] External links
- Full text
- Text, different source (scroll down to (D))
- The King's reply to the Petition, scroll down to (J)
- The Parliamentary Archives holds this historic record
- Official text of the Petition of Right as amended and in force today within the United Kingdom, from the UK Statute Law Database
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