Ancient Constitution Of England
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Ancient Constitution Of England
The ancient constitution of England was a 17th-century political theory about the common law, and the antiquity of the House of Commons, used at the time in particular to oppose the royal prerogative. It was developed initially by Sir Edward Coke, in his law reports; and has been analysed in modern times by J. G. A. Pocock in ''The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law'' (1st edition 1957; reissued "with a retrospect" 1987). This is not to be conflated with Bancroft-Prize-winner Mary Sarah Bilder's "transatlantic constitution." Legal antiquarianism The self-conscious antiquarian study of the law gathered momentum from the 15th century. It supported the theories of the ancient constitution. In his ''Institutes of the Lawes of England'' Coke challenged the accepted view of the Norman Conquest by asserting it amounted to trial by battle, with William the Conqueror agreeing to maintain the Anglo-Saxon laws. Political role In the reign of Charles I of England, reasoning based on the ...
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Common Law
In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky, but the articulate voice of some sovereign or quasi sovereign that can be identified," ''Southern Pacific Company v. Jensen'', 244 U.S. 205, 222 (1917) (Oliver Wendell Holmes, dissenting). By the early 20th century, legal professionals had come to reject any idea of a higher or natural law, or a law above the law. The law arises through the act of a sovereign, whether that sovereign speaks through a legislature, executive, or judicial officer. The defining characteristic of common law is that it arises as precedent. Common law courts look to the past decisions of courts to synthesize the legal principles of past cases. '' Stare decisis'', the principle that cases should be decided according to consistent principled rules so ...
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Algernon Sidney
Algernon Sidney or Sydney (15 January 1623 – 7 December 1683) was an English politician, republican political theorist and colonel. A member of the middle part of the Long Parliament and commissioner of the trial of King Charles I of England, he opposed the king's execution. Sidney was later charged with plotting against Charles II, in part based on his most famous work, ''Discourses Concerning Government'', which was used by the prosecution as a witness at his trial. He was executed for treason. After his death, Sidney was revered as a "Whig patriot—hero and martyr". The works of Algernon Sidney, along with those of contemporary John Locke, are considered a cornerstone of western thought. ''Discourses Concerning Government'' cost Sidney his life. However, the ideas it put forth survived and ultimately culminated in the Glorious Revolution in England and the founding of the United States. Sidney directly opposed the theory of divine right of kings by suggesting ideas such ...
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Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke (; 12 January NS.html"_;"title="New_Style.html"_;"title="/nowiki>New_Style">NS">New_Style.html"_;"title="/nowiki>New_Style">NS/nowiki>_1729_–_9_July_1797)_was_an_ NS.html"_;"title="New_Style.html"_;"title="/nowiki>New_Style">NS">New_Style.html"_;"title="/nowiki>New_Style">NS/nowiki>_1729_–_9_July_1797)_was_an_Anglo-Irish_people">Anglo-Irish_Politician.html" ;"title="Anglo-Irish_people.html" ;"title="New_Style">NS.html" ;"title="New_Style.html" ;"title="/nowiki>New Style">NS">New_Style.html" ;"title="/nowiki>New Style">NS/nowiki> 1729 – 9 July 1797) was an Anglo-Irish people">Anglo-Irish Politician">statesman, economist, and philosopher. Born in Dublin, Burke served as a member of Parliament (MP) between 1766 and 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party. Burke was a proponent of underpinning virtues with manners in society and of the importance of religious institutions for the moral stability and good of the state. These views wer ...
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Reflections On The Revolution In France
''Reflections on the Revolution in France'' is a political pamphlet written by the Irish statesman Edmund Burke and published in November 1790. It is fundamentally a contrast of the French Revolution to that time with the unwritten British Constitution and, to a significant degree, an argument with British supporters and interpreters of the events in France. One of the best-known intellectual attacks against the French Revolution, ''Reflections'' is a defining tract of modern conservatism as well as an important contribution to international theory. The Norton Anthology of English Literature describes ''Reflections'' as becoming the "most eloquent statement of British conservatism favoring monarchy, aristocracy, property, hereditary succession, and the wisdom of the ages." Above all else, it has been one of the defining efforts of Edmund Burke's transformation of "traditionalism into a self-conscious and fully conceived political philosophy of conservatism". The pamphlet has ...
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David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, scepticism, and naturalism. Beginning with '' A Treatise of Human Nature'' (1739–40), Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Hume argued against the existence of innate ideas, positing that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and George Berkeley as an Empiricist. Hume argued that inductive reasoning and belief in causality cannot be justified rationally; instead, they result from custom and mental habit. We never actually perceive that one event caus ...
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John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey
John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey, (13 October 16965 August 1743) was an English courtier and political writer. Heir to the Earl of Bristol, he obtained the key patronage of Walpole, and was involved in many court intrigues and literary quarrels, being apparently caricatured by Pope and Fielding. His memoirs of the early reign of George II were too revealing to be published in his time and did not appear for more than a century. Family background Hervey was the eldest son of John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol, by his second wife, Elizabeth. He was known as Lord Hervey from 1723, upon the death of his elder half-brother, Carr, the only son of his father's first wife, Isabella, but Lord Hervey never became Earl of Bristol, as he predeceased his father. Life Hervey was educated at Westminster School and at Clare College, Cambridge, where he took his M.A. degree in 1715. His father then sent him to Paris in 1716, and thence to Hanover to pay court to George I. He was a frequent vi ...
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Placemen
In the political history of Britain, placemen were Members of Parliament who held paid office in the civil service, generally sinecures, simultaneously with their seat in the legislature. William and Mary Placemen exerted substantial influence over legislation during the reign of William III and Mary II, who jointly acceded to the throne following the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89. Estimates of the number of placemen in Parliament during the 1690s vary, but the consensus among contemporary chroniclers converges around 100 or so (with a few outliers among government critics such as Samuel Grascome, who put the number far higher). As of 1690, William's court adopted an explicit policy directing placemen—who, at that time, included customs officers as well as others with 'Pentions' or 'other Advantages' provided by royal largesse—to advance the Crown's interest in Parliament, particularly as regards voting supply. Rubini notes that this is not surprising, as placemen 'recei ...
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Glorious Revolution
The Glorious Revolution; gd, Rèabhlaid Ghlòrmhor; cy, Chwyldro Gogoneddus , also known as the ''Glorieuze Overtocht'' or ''Glorious Crossing'' in the Netherlands, is the sequence of events leading to the deposition of King James II and VII of England and Scotland in November 1688, and his replacement by his daughter Mary II and her husband and James's nephew William III of Orange, de facto ruler of the Dutch Republic. A term first used by John Hampden (1653–1696), John Hampden in late 1689, it has been notable in the years since for having been described as the last successful invasion of England as well as an internal coup, with differing interpretations from the Dutch and English perspectives respectively. Despite his personal Catholicism, a religion opposed by the Protestant majority in England and Scotland, James became king in February 1685 with widespread support in both countries, since many feared that his exclusion would lead to a repetition of the 16391651 Wa ...
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Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, (26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745; known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole) was a British statesman and Whig politician who, as First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons, is generally regarded as the ''de facto'' first Prime Minister of Great Britain. Although the exact dates of Walpole's dominance, dubbed the "Robinocracy", are a matter of scholarly debate, the period 1721–1742 is often used. He dominated the Walpole–Townshend ministry, as well as the subsequent Walpole ministry, and holds the record as the longest-serving British prime minister. W. A. Speck wrote that Walpole's uninterrupted run of 20 years as prime minister "is rightly regarded as one of the major feats of British political history. Explanations are usually offered in terms of his expert handling of the political system after 1720, ndhis unique blending of the surviving powers of the crown with the ...
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Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (; 16 September 1678 – 12 December 1751) was an English politician, government official and political philosopher. He was a leader of the Tories, and supported the Church of England politically despite his antireligious views and opposition to theology.See e.g., Henry St. John Viscount Bolingbroke, "Letters or Essays Addressed to Alexander Pope: Introduction"''The Works of Lord Bolingbroke: With a Life, Prepared Expressly for This Edition, Containing Additional Information Relative to His Personal and Public Character,'' (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1841) Vol 3, pp. 40–64. Also available on Project Gutenberg as "Letter to Alexander Pope" i ''Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope''D'Holbach, Baronparagraph 206 He supported the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 which sought to overthrow the new king George I. Escaping to France he became foreign minister for the Pretender. He was attainted for treason, but reversed course and was ...
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William I Of England
William I; ang, WillelmI (Bates ''William the Conqueror'' p. 33– 9 September 1087), usually known as William the Conqueror and sometimes William the Bastard, was the first Norman king of England, reigning from 1066 until his death in 1087. A descendant of Rollo, he was Duke of Normandy from 1035 onward. By 1060, following a long struggle to establish his throne, his hold on Normandy was secure. In 1066, following the death of Edward the Confessor, William invaded England, leading an army of Normans to victory over the Anglo-Saxon forces of Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings, and suppressed subsequent English revolts in what has become known as the Norman Conquest. The rest of his life was marked by struggles to consolidate his hold over England and his continental lands, and by difficulties with his eldest son, Robert Curthose. William was the son of the unmarried Duke Robert I of Normandy and his mistress Herleva. His illegitimate status and his youth caused s ...
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William Dugdale
Sir William Dugdale (12 September 1605 – 10 February 1686) was an English antiquary and herald. As a scholar he was influential in the development of medieval history as an academic subject. Life Dugdale was born at Shustoke, near Coleshill in Warwickshire, where his father, John Dugdale, was steward to the local landowner. As he was born, a swarm of bees flew into the garden, which some considered "a happy presage on the life of the babe". He was educated at King Henry VIII School, Coventry. In 1623 he married Margaret Huntbach (1607–81), with whom he had nineteen children. In 1625, the year after his father's death, he purchased the manor of Blyth, near Shustoke. During an enclosure dispute with a neighbour a few years later he met the Leicestershire antiquary William Burton, who acted as arbitrator. He became involved in transcribing documents and collecting church notes and met other Midlands antiquaries such as Sir Symon Archer (1581–1662) and Sir Thomas Ha ...
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