Note 53 — Chapter IV

Lord Falkland felt and spoke strongly on the extra-judicial opinion the judges had given at Charles’ request, on the king’s right to ship-money. “No meal undigested,” he said, “can lie heavier upon the stomach than that unsaid would have lain upon my conscience.” He complained that the judges, “the persons who should have been as dogs to defend the flock, have become the wolves to devour it;” that they had exceeded their functions, “being judges of law and not of necessity, that is, being judges and not philosophers or politicians;” that to justify the plea of necessity, they have “supposed mighty and eminent dangers in the most quiet and halcyon days, but a few contemptible pirates being our most formidable enemies;” they also “supposing the supposed doings to be so sudden that it could not stay for a Parliament which required but a forty days’ stay, allowed to the king the sole power in necessity, the sole judgment of necessity, and by that enabled him to take from us what he would, when he would, and how he would.” He especially declaimed against the Chief Justice (at this time Lord Keeper) Finch, who importuned the other judges “as a most admirable solicitor, but a most abominable judge.”... “He it was who gave away with his breath what our ancestors have purchased with so long expense of their time, their care, their treasures, and their bloods, and strove to make our grievances mortal and our slavery irreparable,” ... “he who hath already undone us by wholesale [and now as chancellor] hath the power of undoing us by retail.”—MSS. Clarendon Papers, No. 1464, and Rushworth.