Liberty Against the Law by Christopher Hill

Author:Christopher Hill
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2015-06-09T22:00:00+00:00

Part Five – Society, Law and Liberty

Chapter Nineteen – History and the Law

We Englishmen behold

Our ancient customs bold

More precious than gold

Be clean cast away...

Temporal lords be almost gone,

Households keep they few or none,

Which causeth many a goodly man

For to beg his bread...

If he steal for necessity

There is none other remedy

But the law will shortly

Hang him all save his head...

The great men now take no heed

I low ill so ere the commons speed

The poor dare not speak for dread

For nought they can recover.

Thomas Langdon, ‘Nowadays’, c.1537, in L. I. Gurney, Recusant Poets, 1 (1938), pp. 33-7.

*

Should I sigh because I see

Laws like spider webs to be?

Lesser flies are quickly ta’en

While the great break out again.

Barnabe’s Journal (1638), p. 85.

*

God changes circumstances, assigns kingdoms and takes them away...through the agency of men.

Milton, Defence of the People of England (1651), in Complete Prose Works, IV, pp. 394-5.

*

Only Armed Pow’r can Law protect,

And rescue Wealth from Crowds, when Poverty

Treads down those Laws on which the Rich rely.

Yet Law, where Kings are arm’d, rescues the crowd

Even from themselves, when Plenty makes them proud.

Davenant, ‘Upon His Sacred Majestie’s most happy Return to His Dominions’, Shorter Poems and Songs from the Plays and Masques (ed. A. M. Gibbs, Oxford U.P., 1972), p. 83.

*

’Tis liberty, liberty, liberty that wicked men long for.

Richard Baxter, A Holy Commonwealth (1659), pp. 92-4, 226-31.

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