Petition of Right, parliamentary proceedings

Manuscript volume containing a [contemporary copy of an] account of the proceedings of the conference between the House of Commons and the House of Lords concerning the liberty of the subject, undertaken before drawing up the Petition of Right. Includes the arguments of Sir Dudley Digges, Sir Edward Littleton, John Selden, Sir Edward Coke, [Richard] Cresheld and [Robert] Mason, and extracts from the Parliament, Pipe and Close Rolls from 1272.

Put forward to King Charles I in the English Parliament of 1628, the Petition of Right asserted four liberties: freedom from arbitrary arrest; freedom from non-parliamentary taxation; freedom from the billeting of troops; and freedom from martial law.

Single item.

Access to this collection is unrestricted for the purpose of private study and personal research within the supervised environment and restrictions of the Library's Palaeography Room. Uncatalogued material may not be seen. Please contact the University Archivist for details.

From the Library of the London Institution.

Collection level description.

Manuscript quarto. Sewn into a vellum cover.

Compiled by Sarah Smith as part of the RSLP AIM25 Project.

Copies may be made, subject to the condition of the original. Copying must be undertaken by the Palaeography Room staff, who will need a minimum of 24 hours to process requests.

This manuscript was formerly owned by Sir John Jenyns, MP (d 1642).

See Journal of the House of Lords , III, 717-31. A shorter version of this manuscript was printed in J Rushworth Historical collections of private passages of state (Robert Boulter, London, 1682) and in Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England. From the Norman Conquest, in 1066. to the year, 1803 (R. Bagshaw, Longmans & Co, London, 1806-12).