Arbitrary Government

[LaurieAG]

I was reading a book the other day and came across the following, page 143/144 of "England in the Seventeenth Century", Pelican Books, by Maurice Ashley, states:-

 

In 1679 "the first Exclusionist Parliament, as it was to be known, did one useful piece of business. On the day that it was prorogued, the king (Charles II) gave his assent to a Habeas Corpus Amendment Act. The writ of Habeas Corpus, whereby a prisoner could demand that he should be brought before the courts and have his case examined, was a well established right of Englishmen, but a number of ways had been found of evading its use in the case of political prisoners. The philosopher, James Harrington, for example, had been removed from the Tower of London, when his sisters applied for Habeas Corpus, and (was) sent out to a rocky island where the writ did not run. The new Act put an end to such anomalies and deprived the executive of powers that might have been employed in support of arbitrary government."

 

Any comments?