But I was going on with my proofs of the national aversion to the imperial law.
The next shall be taken from that famous dispute concerning the succession to the crown of _Scotland_ in the reign of EDWARD I. For a question arising about the kind of law by which the controversy should be decided, and it being especially debated, whether the _Cæsarean_ law, as a sort of _jus gentium_, ought not in such a cause to have the preference to the law of _England_; it was then unanimously determined by the great council of NORHAM, that the authority of the _Cæsarean_ law should by no means be admitted; NE INDE MAJESTATIS ANGLICANÆ JURI FIERET DETRIMENTUM[140].
This determination was public, and given on a very solemn occasion. And in general we may observe, that at the junctures when the state hath been most jealous of its liberty and honour, it hath declared the loudest against the _imperial laws_: as in the WONDER-WORKING parliament under RICHARD II, when the duke of _Gloucester_ accused the archbishop of _York_, the duke of _Ireland_, and other creatures of the king, of high treason. The charge was so fully proved, that the court had no other way of diverting the storm, than by pretending an irregularity in the forms of procedure. To this end the lawyers were consulted with, or more properly directed. I will disguise nothing. They descended so much from the dignity of their profession, as to act in perfect subserviency to the views of the court; and therefore gave it as their opinion, that the proceedings against the lords were of no validity, as being contrary to the forms prescribed by the _civil law_. The barons took themselves to be insulted by these shifts of the lawyers. They insisted that the proceedings were agreeable to their own customs, and declared roundly that they would never suffer _England_ to be governed by the _Roman_ civil law[141].
What think ye now of these examples? Are they not a proof that the spirit of liberty ran high in those times, when neither the intrigues of churchmen nor the chicane of lawyers could put a stop to it? It seems as if no direct attempts on the constitution could have been made with the least appearance of success; and that therefore the abettors of arbitrary power were obliged to work their way obliquely, by contriving methods for the introduction of a foreign law.