An Enquiry into the Power of Dispensing with Penal Statutes...
A Contemporary Defense of Parliamentary Supremacy in the Year of the Revolution Atkyns, Sir Robert [1621-1710]. An Enquiry into the Power of Dispensing with Penal Statutes. Together with Some Animadversions upon A Book Writ by Sir Edw. Herbert, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, Entituled, A Short Account of the Authorities in Law Upon Which Judgment Was Given in Sir Edward Hales's Case. London: Printed for Timothy Goodwin, 1689. [ii], 58 pp. Lacking initial leaf, a printer advertisement, and final leaf, a blank. Folio (11-1/4" x 7-1/2"; 28.6 x 19 cm). Handsomely bound in period-style goatskin, boards ruled in blind, raised bands, spine with blind fillets and lettering piece. Light browning and occasional foxing, faint marginal dampstaining, scattered early underlining and annotations, a few tiny spark burns, light soiling to title and terminal leaf. An appealing copy in an attractive binding. $750. * First edition. A significant constitutional tract published in the immediate aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, offering a sustained refutation of the royal "dispensing power"-the asserted prerogative to suspend or dispense with statutes without parliamentary consent. Sir Robert Atkyns, former justice of the Court of Common Pleas, directly answers the arguments advanced by Edward Herbert in defense of the Crown's position in the case of Godden v. Hales, one of the central legal controversies of the later Stuart monarchy. Atkyns insists upon the supremacy of statute enacted by King-in-Parliament, rejecting the legality of unilateral royal suspension and thereby articulating a position that would find legislative expression in the English Bill of Rights. The tract stands as one of the clearer contemporary expositions of the constitutional settlement emerging in 1689 and the subordination of prerogative to law. Second (and final) edition also published in the same year. English Short-Title Catalogue R22814.
Price: $750.00
Book number 72613