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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 Excerpt:...Upon complaint by the King he was condemned to death as a traitor, but was reprieved. The first Parliament of Henry IV declared the complaint and condemnation a breach of law and privilege. Such spirit became rare when Parliament declined in the sixteenth century. Privilege of speech, says Hatsell, was frequently cavilled at by the courtiers in the reigns of Queen Mary, Elizabeth, and James, when they thought 1 Autobiography, i, 186. 1 De Lolme, The Constitution of England, hit. n, chap. 16. it trenched on the royal prerogative, and in general the House acquiesced in this doctrine. The friends of prerogative inveighed against "some tribunes of the people whose mouths could not be stopped "; declared that "a member must not speak what and of whom he list"; and threatened "those idle heads that would meddle with reforming the church and transforming the commonwealth." With the rise of Puritan independence of thought came new assertion of parliamentary privilege. The King's habitual assumption that there were various important matters of state, such as the laying of impositions and the conduct of foreign relations, that Parliament had no right so much as to discuss, led it to declare in May of 1610: "We hold it an ancient, general, and undoubted right of Parliament to debate freely all matters, which do properly concern the subject and his right or state; which freedom of debate being once foreclosed, the essence of the liberty of Parliament is withal dissolved." 1 Ten years later the issue was squarely joined by a Parliament to which, as Lord Russell well says, every Englishman ought to look back with reverence. Having first voted the King two subsidies, and having discouraged all recurrence to past complaints, they set...