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For much of Europe the seventeenth century was, as it has been termed, an "Age of Absolutism" in which single rulers held tremendous power. Yet the English in the same century succeeded in limiting the power of their monarchs. The English Civil War in midcentury and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 were the culmination of a protracted struggle between kings eager to consolidate and even extend their power and subjects who were eager to identify and defend individual liberties. The source and nature of sovereignty was of course the central issue. Did sovereignty reside solely with the Crown—as claimed theorists of "the divine right"? Or did sovereignty reside in a combination of Crown and Parliament—or perhaps in only the House of Commons—or perhaps, again, in the common law, or even in "the people"? To advance one or another of these views, scholars, statesmen, lawyers, clergy, and unheralded citizens took to their books—and then to their pens. History, law, and scripture were revisited in a quest to discover the proper relationship between ruler and ruled, between government and the governed. Pamphlets abounded as never before. An entire literature of political discourse resulted from this extraordinary outpouring—and vigorous exchange—of views. The results are of a more than merely antiquarian interest. The political tracts of the English peoples in the seventeenth century established enduring principles of governance and of liberty that benefited not only themselves but the founders of the American republic. These writings, by the renowned (Coke, Sidney, Shaftesbury) and the unremembered ("Anonymous") therefore constitute an enduring contribution to the historical record of the rise of ordered liberty. Volume I of The Struggle for Sovereignty consists of pamphlets written from the reign of James I to the Restoration (1620–1660). Volume II encompasses writings from the Restoration through the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689. All of the major issues and writers are represented. Each volume includes an introduction and chronology.

HE RESTORATION OF KING, CHURCH, AND PARLIAMENT

Two main constitutional aspects of the restored parliament demand consideration: its relationship with the king and his government, and its institutional development. The relationship with the king was more complex than it appeared. The long, so-called Cavalier Parliament of 1661, which succeeded the Convention Parliament that re-called Charles, gave—sometimes with imprudent largesse—but took care to preserve its key powers. It began by enacting legislation to protect and strengthen the Crown and solidify royalist political control. The bitter experience of the civil war era and Interregnum that followed shaped these would-be cures. The first measure the Cavalier Parliament passed was a new, broader treason act. This made it treasonable to “compass imagine invent devise or intend” the death or harm of the king or aim to deprive or depose him.6 Vivid experience with the power of political tracts and polemical preaching to incite the public convinced them to include “any Printing Writing Preaching or Malicious and advised speaking” as potentially treasonable.7 Further, it was made a punishable offence to “publish or affirm the King to be an Heretick or a Papist” or to assert that he “endeavours to introduce Popery.” Parliament took care to ensure the act not “deprive either of the Houses of Parliament or any of theire Members of theire just ancient Freedome and priviledge of debating any matters or busines,” that they have “the same freedome of speech and all other Priviledges whatsoever as they had before the making of this Act.” An act was passed that prohibited submission of a petition to Parliament or the king by more than ten persons, and another instituted censorship.

Joyce Lee Malcolm (ed.)

Joyce Lee Malcolm is a historian and constitutional scholar specializing in British and Colonial American History.  She focuses on the development of individual rights and on war and society.

Malcolm has written extensively on the evolution of rights. The two-volume collection she edited, “The Struggle for Sovereignty: Seventeenth-Century English Political Tracts”, brings the work of important contemporaries of Milton, Hobbes, and Locke to a wide audience for the first time. She was the first historian to thoroughly investigate the origins of the Second Amendment and the right to self-defense in England and America. Her books on that subject, “To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right” and “Guns and Violence: The English Experience” were published by Harvard University Press. Malcolm was cited in the recent US Supreme Court opinion in District of Columbia versus Heller as well as in numerous other court opinions and articles and briefs.

“Peter’s War: A New England Slave Child and the American Revolution”, published by Yale University Press, is her seventh and most recent book. It is the dramatic biography of Peter, a “negroe servant boy” sold at the age of nineteen months to a childless white couple in Massachusetts. In retelling Peter’s story, this highly praised book illuminates race relations in colonial New England, the coming of the American Revolution, and the experience of soldiers, white and black, who fought on both sides in that struggle.

Joyce Malcolm is Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law and lives in Alexandria, Virginia. She previously taught at Princeton University, Bentley University, Boston University, Northeastern University and Cambridge University. She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and bye fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge University. Recipient of many awards and grants, she served as a Senior Advisor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Security Studies Program and a Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies.

Her essays have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, USA Today, The Boston Globe and other newspapers.