INTRODUCTION

Summary

At the threshold of the eighteenth century it will be worth our while once more to recall to mind the influences which brought the English constitution into connexion with the great act of emancipation from Rome.

That act, by connecting itself with events in former times which prepared the way for it, had in England more than anywhere else a national and political direction. The national powers of King and Parliament, to which the dignitaries of the Church who were Englishmen allied themselves, became by this means for the first time really and truly sovereign. On their union is founded that omnipotence of the legislative power which is the characteristic of modern England.

The transformed constitution appears in its most simple and united form in the time of Queen Elizabeth, who made the decisions of the legislature a ground for repudiating every foreign claim to the crown, and maintained its full independence in the happiest manner.

But immediately after her, during the reign of her next successor, tendencies towards an internal disruption made their appearance.

The Stuarts adopted the theory of legislative power which sanctioned their birthright. They united themselves in the closest manner with the Anglican Church, which they intended to introduce into Scotland also, and to employ as the most valuable support to their authority; for the Church it was which continued to favour that notion of a plenitude of monarchical power which floated before their eyes.