| | by admin | | posted on 8th December 2025 in Radical Roots | | views 30 | |
Edward Coke’s 1610 ruling in the Case of Proclamations helped establish the principle that even kings are subject to the law, shaping the constitutional struggles that led to the English Civil War.
Sir Edward Coke was one of the most influential legal minds of the early seventeenth century. Serving as Attorney General, then Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and later Chief Justice of King's Bench, Coke championed the idea that the common law stood above personal power. He argued that kings, like subjects, were bound to the law of the realm. This principle, although obvious to us now, was deeply threatening to monarchs who believed in the divine right of kings.
King James I considered himself a learned, God-appointed ruler and believed he had the right to issue royal proclamations with the force of law. Coke disagreed. He insisted that only Parliament could make or change law, and that no monarch could govern simply by will or command. This clash between the king's claim to absolute authority and Coke's defence of legal limits would become one of the key flashpoints of the early Stuart period.
The debate came to a head in 1610 when the Crown sought legal approval for two new royal proclamations: one restricting new building in London and another limiting the manufacture of wheat starch. James I asked whether he could create new offences through proclamation. Coke's response became one of the most important constitutional rulings in British history.
Coke declared that the king “cannot change any part of the common law, nor create any offence by his proclamation, which was not an offence before.†In other words, proclamations might guide the nation, but they could not make new laws. The monarch, no matter how powerful, was subject to the law of the land. This ruling placed a permanent boundary around royal authority and affirmed Parliament's role in legislation.
The Case of Proclamations planted the seeds for the great constitutional battles that followed. By insisting that kings could not legislate by decree, Coke laid the intellectual foundation for Parliament's later resistance to royal power. When Charles I attempted to rule without Parliament from 1629 to 1640, he relied on arguments similar to those rejected in 1610: the idea that the monarch's will was sufficient to govern the country.
Parliament, drawing heavily on Coke's principles, argued that the king had no right to raise taxes, create new offences or override long-standing legal customs without parliamentary consent. Coke's language reappeared in key documents such as the Petition of Right (1628) and later in parliamentary speeches opposing royal absolutism. By the time civil war broke out in 1642, the constitutional ground had already shifted. Many MPs, lawyers and ordinary people believed passionately that the rule of law must stand above the rule of an individual king.
Although the The English Civil War Period had many causes—religious, political and financial—Coke's ruling supplied one of its essential arguments: that lawful authority comes not from divine appointment but from the consent of the governed. The Case of Proclamations therefore forms part of the deeper “radical roots†of constitutional government in Britain.
Edward Coke's insistence that the monarch was subject to the law influenced not only the English Civil War but also the later development of constitutionalism around the world. His ideas helped shape the Bill of Rights of 1689 and informed early modern discussions about liberty, conscience and lawful resistance. Across the Atlantic, Coke's writings were studied by American revolutionaries, who drew upon his view that the law protects the people from arbitrary power.
Today, the Case of Proclamations stands as a reminder that even the most powerful rulers must operate within a framework of law. For the Radical Roots project, Coke's story highlights a crucial turning point in English history: a moment when legal courage challenged absolute monarchy and opened the way for a more balanced, democratic understanding of authority.