Parliament the dangers confronting England arose
from assumption of undue power by the king, the
bishops, and the judges. The twelve common-law
justices at Westminster in their answer to the
king's question regarding the lawfulness of ship
money had laid down the principle that the king,
in case of a great and declared necessity, of the
imminence of which he alone was judge, might
require financial aid of his subjects without the
intervention of a parliament. Subjected to such
interpretation every law and liberty of the English
people lay at the mercy of the king's whim. "Such
Art," said a parliamentary pamphleteer, "hath been
used to deny, traverse, avoid, or frustrate the true
force, or meaning of all our Lawes and Charters,
that if wee grant Ship-money upon these grounds,
with Ship-money wee grant all besides." ¹ One of
the judges, Robert Berkeley, had expressed him-
self more bluntly than his fellows. On one occa-
sion he had asserted that in certain cases judges on
the bench were above an act of Parliament; on
another he had announced "that there was a Rule
of Law, and a Rule of Government, and that many
things which might not be done by the Rule of
Law, might be done by the Rule of Govervment." ²
The king himself, in a declaration published at the
dissolution of the Short Parliament, had denounced

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