The Petition of Right. By Frances Helen Relf. (Minneapolis :
University of Minnesota. 75 cents.)—This valuable essay by an American scholar, who has already done good work on the reign of Charles I., throws an entirely new light on the famous Petition of 1628. Using sources that were unknown to Dr. S. R. Gardiner, Miss Relf gives a full account of the famous Parliamentary con- flict, and shows that it has been misunderstood. The Petition was not a statute, though it had some resemblance to a private Act. On the Parliament Roll it was entered by itself, apart from the public and private Acts. It was, in fact, no more than " a declara- tion of the law given by the two Houses in their judicial capacity and 'endorsed by the King." So far as the Petition enumerated specific grievances, it was recognized by the Courts ; its general principles, however, were not recognized in Eliot's case of 1629, or in the Ship Money case of 1637. The Petition marked a new era in our Constitutional development because it enunciated those principles, not because it imposed any effective check on the arbi- trary rule of the Stuart Kings. Miss Relf shows also that the Judges have been unfairly blamed for not going beyond their proper sphere and asserting a right to decide between the Crown and Parliament. It seems that in the noted case of the Five Knights in 1627, which led up to the Petition of 1628, they abstained from delivering a final judgment.
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