1994/09/01 by Paul Christianson · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #American Constitutional Law and Politics #Commons #Constitution #European Political History Analysis #House of Commons #Imprisonment #Law #Martial law #Parliament #Political science #Politics #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity #Spanish Civil War #State (computer science)
paper · doi:10.1017/s0018246x00014874
openalex publication_date 1994/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
ABSTRACT Debates over billeting and martial law arose in the parliament of 1628 in conjunction with such other grievances as the forced loan and discretionary imprisonment employed by royal servants from 1626 onward to keep alive the war effort against the monarchs of Spain and France. Both houses dealt with billeting rather quickly, the Lords by resolving a dispute among magistrates and military officers in Banbury, Oxfordshire, and the Commons by hearing general and particular complaints from civilians, expelling a member who signed an order for billeting, and petitioning the king. Attacks upon the employment of military law internally when a state of war did not exist in England originated in the Commons, reawakened fears over the perceived threat of Roman or civil law superiority to the common law, and set off fierce debates in which royal servants and civil lawyers supported and leading common lawyers denounced as illegal the commissions of martial law issued by the privy council. Underlying these debates, as with those over discretionary imprisonment, were conflicting interpretations of England's ancient constitution with practical consequences for the governance of the realm .