Existing comment:
Creating Magna Carta in Conference
In 1627, King Charles I and the House of Commons debated whether a king had the right to imprison his subjects without judicial procedure and without leveling specific charges, a question that arose in response to the Case of the Five Knights. Charles had adopted a policy of forced loans when Parliament refused to fund the Thirty Years War and imprisoned the knights, who would not lend money to the crown. In this pamphlet, Sir Edward Coke and other members of Parliament formulated the interpretation of Magna Carta used to object to the imprisonment of the knights and to claim the inviolability of a subject's right to due process of law. |