ossessors of governmental powers, soon began again to claim
and exercise autocratic power, to encroach upon the rights and
liberties thought to have been secured to the subject by the royal
assent to the Petition of Right and vindicated by successful
resistance, and also to suspend the operation of the laws at his
pleasure. Unfortunately again there was as yet no impartial,
independent tribunal in England to determine authoritatively the line
between the royal power and the specified rights of the subject. The
judges were still removable at the king's sole pleasure. James II did
not hesitate to use this power to obtain such opinions and decisions
as he desired. Preparatory to the trial of the Quo Warranto case
against the City of London to procure the forfeiture of its charter,
the king removed Chief Justice Pemberton and appointed in his place
the servile Saunders who had drawn the writ in the case and had
conducted all the proceedings in behalf of the crown as its counsel to
the stage where the case was ready for argument in the Court of King's
Bench. The case of the city was thereby made hopeless and the city
itself helpless. In the case of the "Seven Bishops," prosecuted for
libel in presenting to the king a petition for him to recall his order
for the reading in the churches his Declaration of Indulgence, he
seems to have felt tolerably sure of the court as it was already
constituted. Two able and learned justices, however, Holloway and
Powell, ventured the opinion that the petition was not libelous. They
were both promptly "recalled."

Again force had to be used to free the subject and maintain his
"rights and liberties" against the sovereign. James II was driven from
the country and William of Orange called to the throne. This time the
people in settling the new government through parliamentary action
went farther than before in the way of restraint upon the government
and took the necessary step to secure their rights and liberties. In a
new instrument, this time called a Declaration instead of a Petition,
they reiterated the rights of the subject as twice before they had
been formally asserted in the Magna Charta and the Petition of Right.
This instrument, known as the Declaration of Rights of 1688, was
presented to William and Mary, who solemnly engaged to observe and
maintain its provisions. Further still (and this was the new and
effective guaranty of the subject's rights), in the Act for the
settlement of