The Constitution of England

Chapter I

23 u c h a p t e r i u Causes of the liberty of the English Nation.— Reasons of the difference between the Government of England, and that of France.—In England, the great power of the Crown, under the Norman kings, created an union between the Nobility and the People. When the Romans, attacked on all sides by the Barbarians, were reduced to the necessity of defending the centre of their Empire, they abandoned Great Britain as well as several other of their distant provinces. The Island, thus left to itself, became a prey to the Nations inhabiting the shores of the Baltic; who, having first destroyed the ancient inhabitants, and for a long time reciprocally annoyed each other, established several Sovereignties in the southern part of the Island, afterwards called England, which at length were united, under Egbert, into one Kingdom. The successors of this Prince, denominated the Anglo-Saxon Princes, among whom Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor are particularly celebrated, reigned for about two hundred years; but, though our knowledge of the prin-cipal events of this early period of theEnglishHistory is in some degree exact, yet we have but vague and uncertain accounts of the nature of the Government which those Nations introduced. It appears to have had little more affinity with the present Constitution, than the general relation, common indeed to all the Governments established by the Northern Nations, that of having a King and a Body of Nobility ; and the ancient Saxon Government is “left us in story” (to use the 24 book i expressions of Sir William Temple on the subject) “but like so many antique , broken, or defaced pictures, which may still represent something of the customs and fashions of those ages, though little of the true lines, proportions , or resemblance” (a). It is at the era of the Conquest, that we are to lookfortherealfoundation of the English Constitution.1 From that period, says Spelman, novus seclorum nascitur ordo.2 (b) William of Normandy, having defeated Harold, (a) See his Introduction to the History of England. [[William Temple, Introduction to the History of England (1695). Composed in the period after William of Orange (William III) and Mary’s accession to the English throne, most of Temple’s history was devoted to the reign in England of William of Normandy.]] 1. In the paragraphs that follow, De Lolme introduces one of his major themes concerning the creation of England’s political freedom. England’s constitutional history begins with the Norman Conquest of 1066, which introduced oppressive feudal lawand near-absolute royal powers. The concentration of so much politicalcapacityinthehands of the monarch ultimately served constitutional liberty by uniting the English nobility and the people in opposition to absolute power. 2. “A new series of ages arises.” (b) See Spelman, Of Parliaments. [[De Lolme refers to Henry Spelman’s essay “Of Parliaments,” which appeared in the 1723 Reliquiae Spelmannianae: The Posthumous Works of Sir Henry Spelman Kt. Spelman (1563?–1641), a distinguished legalantiquarian, published several studies indicating a major transformation of English law at the time of the Norman Conquest.]]—It has been a favourite thesis with many Writers, to pretend that the Saxon Government was, at the time of the Conquest, by no means subverted ; that William of Normandy legally acceded to the Throne, and consequently to the engagements, of the Saxon Kings; and much argument has in particular been employed with regard to the word Conquest, which, it has been said, in the feudal senseonly meant acquisition. These opinions have been particularly insisted upon in times of popular opposition: and, indeed, there was a far greater probability of success, in raising among the People the notions familiar to them of legal claims and long established customs , than in arguing with them from the no less rational, but less determinate, and somewhat dangerous, doctrines, concerning the original rights of Mankind, and the lawfulness of at all times opposing force to an oppressive Government. But if we consider that the manner in which the public Power is formed in a State, is so very essential a part of its Government, and that a thorough change in this respect was introduced into England by the Conquest, we shall not scruple to allow that a new Government was established. Nay, as almost the whole landed property in the Kingdom was at that time transferred to other hands, a new System of criminal Justiceintroduced, and the language of the law moreover altered, the revolution...