The King, Charles, was involved in a foreign war, the Thirty Years War in Europe.
It takes Parliament to fund a war, and Parliament was not willing. Partly out of dislike for the King's choice of General, George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham. Not so much from any English disinclination to be involved in a mess of Protestants and Catholics and the empires of Europe.
The King padlocked the doors of Parliament, and came up with a variety of shakedown schemes to get the money.
The basic scheme. The King granted titles and land. The new nobility would be beholden to the King. They would support him, and send in the money.
And a variety of more creative schemes. Forced loans, on pain of imprisonment and torture, as one.
Old language about being deprived of life and limb can be more literal than it is today. Talk of lost limbs was not so metaphoric.
The thing is, all of this had already been decided. Divine Right of Kings was a downright nutty idea in England. Torture had been out since the Age of Reason. Shakedown schemes to fund wars, and torture, had been out since the 1215 Magna Carta.
To make a long war short: there were three battles between the forces of the King and the forces of Parliament. The King lost, and was executed -- there is a first time for everything.
There were intense political battles about who should control the army, Parliament or King.
It was the mid-1600s. The colonists in America followed this all intently.
The political thought of the American Revolution was very strongly informed by the events of the English Civil War.
Petition of Right
The Second Amendment is the second most misunderstood. Anglo-American Whig attitudes about militias are vital to understanding it. Whig attitudes about standing armies and militias and the common defense come directly from the English Civil War.
The first amendment is the first most misunderstood. The right to petition is precisely the 1628 Petition of Right.
The Petition of Right is also very nearly the Declaration of Independence. Ours quoted first.
their just powers
the King's Most Excellent Majesty
The King has a Majesty. Properly understood, the King's Majesty can only be just, else he has castrated himself of it. As happened in the English Civil War. I've said that deprived limbs were actual limbs. But sometimes a limb is just a metaphor.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
Manly firmness! Can I bring up the story now, of how Bill Clinton nearly lost his Majesty? It involved an actual cigar.
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
no tallage or aid shall be laid or levied by the king or his heirs in this realm, without the good will and assent of the archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, knights, burgesses, and other the freemen of the commonalty of this realm;
Scan past the bishops and the peers. Get to the commonalty, to equate them.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
Yet nevertheless of late divers commissions directed to sundry commissioners in several counties, with instructions, have issued; by means whereof your people have been in divers places assembled, and required to lend certain sums of money unto your Majesty,
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us
And whereas of late great companies of soldiers and mariners have been dispersed into divers counties of the realm, and the inhabitants against their wills have been compelled to receive them into their houses
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent
divers other charges have been laid and levied upon your people in several counties by lord lieutenants, deputy lieutenants, commissioners for musters, justices of peace and others, by command or direction from your Majesty, or your Privy Council, against the laws and free custom of the realm.
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury
divers of your subjects have of late been imprisoned without any cause showed
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time
And whereas also by the statute called 'The Great Charter of the Liberties of England,' it is declared and enacted
A Note on Constitutional Government
Constitutional government is where the organization and goals are identifiable and understood and invokable. Constitutions can be written or unwritten.
For purposes here, the constitution of England includes the Magna Carta and the Petition of Right.
The United States is literalist about it. It has a constitution, in a written document, titled "the Constitution."
I'd say that the Declaration is a part of our constitution, and the Emancipation Proclamation. They express our fundamental governing values.
The Magna Carta is a part of our constitution, as is the Petition of Right.
Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from executive restraint.
Shaughnessy v. United States, Justice Jackson dissenting, and quoted by Justice Stevens in Rasul v. Bush.
Torture, indefinite detention, executive detention, executive defiance of Habeas Corpus, all the various current and ongoing and startling oppressions:
Fortunately it still is startling, in this country, to find a person held indefinitely in executive custody without accusation of crime or judicial trial.
Justice Jackson
These have been unconstitutional in this realm since 1215, and since 1628, and since 1640. Not merely since 1787.