t Elizabeth raised no objection to the theory that Parliament was the
sovereign power, for her authority controlled Parliament; and so we have
Sir Thomas Smith writing in 1589 that "the most high and absolute power of
the realm of England consisteth in the Parliament."

In his "Ecclesiastical Polity," Book I. (1592-3), Hooker argues that "Laws
human, of what kind soever are available by consent," and that "laws they
are not which public approbation hath not made so"; deciding explicitly
that sovereignty rests ultimately in the people.

VICTORY OF PARLIAMENT OVER THE STUARTS

When he came to the throne in 1603, James I. was prepared to govern with
all the Tudor absolutism, but he had neither Elizabeth's Ministers--Cecil
excepted--nor her knowledge of the English mind. The English Parliament and
the English people had put up with Elizabeth's headstrong, capricious rule,
because it had been a strong rule, and the nation had obviously thriven
under it.[50] But it was another matter altogether when James I. was king.

"By many steps the slavish Parliament of Henry VIII. grew into the
murmuring Parliament of Queen Elizabeth, the mutinous Parliament of James
I., and the rebellious Parliament of Charles I."

The twenty years of James I.'s reign saw the preaching up of the doctrine
of the divine right of kings by the bishops of the Established Church, and
the growing resolution of the Commons to revive their earlier rights and
privileges. If the Stuarts were as unfortunate in their choice of Ministers
as Elizabeth had been successful, the House of Commons was equally happy in
the remarkable men who became its spokesmen and leaders. In the years that
preceded the Civil War--1626-42--three men are conspicuous on the
Parliamentary side: Eliot, Hampden, and Pym. All three were country
gentlemen, of good estate, high principle, and religious
convictions[51]--men of courage and resolution, and of blameless personal
character. Eliot died in prison, in the cause of good government, in 1632;
Hampden fell on Chalgrove Field in 1643.

As in earlier centuries the struggle in the seventeenth century between the
King and the Commons turned mainly on the questions of taxation. (At the
same time an additional cause of dispute can be found in the religious
differences between Charles I. and the Parliamentarians. The latter were
mainly Puritan, accepting the Protestantism of the Church of England, but
hating Catholicism and the high-church vi