The Reaction

Abstract

Alfred Havighurst claimed that ‘by implication they [the Jury] ruled against the legality of the suspending power as exercised by James in the Declaration of Indulgence’. He also argued that none of the judges in the trial of the seven bishops asserted the legality of the suspending power — the abrogation of a law generally — they asserted that the King might dispense with the law in certain specific cases. This was the distinction reflected in the Hales judgement. While the difference in legal terms is significant, in political terms it was a distinction lost on the jury and the public, and, during the trial, the terms were used interchangeably. Havighurst suggested that the pressure of public opinion swung the trial: ‘in terms of popular pressure hardly any other trial in the seventeenth century is comparable’. During the trial, the public applauded arguments for the bishops and scorning those for the crown.¹ W. L. Sachse concluded that the acquittal was a verdict against James’s whole system of government.² The lawyers at the trial had, in defending the bishops, developed general arguments against James which would be used later in the Revolution.³