ers and servants, of
whatever degree, in case cf any violation of the constitution, were
alone culpable.[**]

All the farmers and officers of the customs, who had been employed
during so many years in levying tonnage and poundage and the new
impositions, were likewise declared criminals, and were afterwards
glad to compound for a pardon by paying a fine of one hundred and fifty
thousand pounds.

Every discretionary or arbitrary sentence of the star chamber and high
commission, courts which, from their very constitution, were arbitrary,
underwent a severe scrutiny; and all those who had concurred in such
sentences were voted to be liable to the penalties of law.[***] No
minister of the king, no member of the council, but found himself
exposed by this decision.

The judges who had given their vote against Hambden in the trial of ship
money, were accused before the peers, and obliged to find surety for
their appearance. Berkeley, a judge of the king's bench, was seized by
order of the house, even when sitting in his tribunal; and all men
saw with astonishment the irresistible authority of their
jurisdiction.[****]

The sanction of the lords and commons, as well as that of the king, was
declared necessary for the confirmation of ecclesiastical canons.[v]
And this judgment, it must be confessed, however reasonable, at least
useful, it would have been difficult to justify by any precedent.[v*]

* Clarendon, vol. i. p. 176.

** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 176.

*** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 177.

**** Whitlocke, p. 39.

v Nalson, vol. i. p. 673.

v* An act of parliament, 25th Henry VIII., cap. 19,
allowed the convocation with the king's consent to make
canons. By the famous act of submission to that prince, the
clergy bound themselves to enact no canons without the
king's consent. The parliament was never mentioned nor
thought of. Such pretensions as the commons advanced at
present, would in any former age have been deemed strange
usurpations.

But the present was no time for question or dispute. That decision which
abolished all legislative power except that of parliament, was requisite
for completing the new plan of liberty, and rendering it quite uniform
and systematical. Almost all the bench of bishops, and the most
considerable of the inferior clergy, who had voted in the late
convocation, found themselves exposed by these new principles to the
i