THE opening paragraph of ch. vi of this book is undeniably whiggish. It treats the middle decades of the seventeenth century as the interval between Spelman's death and his resurrection; as a period during which English scholars were preparing themselves to receive the doctrine of a historian far in advance of his time. The best that can be said of this is that it is untypical of the book as a whole, and that the interval it posits is inhabited by characters—Harrington, Prynne, Hobbes and Hale—who do not exactly fit the role of watchers by the sepulchre. In this part of the retrospect, an attempt will be made to review the mid-century in the light of modern research, and consider what was happening to the ‘common-law mind’ and the ‘ancient constitution’ in this rich and tormented period in the history of English political discourse.

The Petition of Right of 1628 brought us to a moment at which it may be said that the doctrine of an ancient and fundamental law had been unchallengeably defined, and yet had failed, or rather had not attempted, to define the prerogative in other than absolute terms. The parliamentary debaters had articulated the demand that the prerogative should act in certain all-important matters only through channels known to the common law, but had left it as possible as ever to present the power which the king exercised regaliter as derived from God and from Nimrod.