Adam B. Forsyth
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adambforsyth.bsky.social
Adam B. Forsyth
@adambforsyth.bsky.social
85 followers 130 following 38 posts
PhD student at Cambridge. I study the legal, political, ecclesiastical, & intellectual history of England in the 16th & 17th centuries, & history of the book! Views strictly my own.

独立之精神，自由之思想

www.hist.cam.ac.uk/people/adam-b-forsyth
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adambforsyth.bsky.social
It’s complicated, but in some ways it actually somewhat precedes that, since the ‘subtype’ that had been most controversial in the Elizabethan period had already been banned by the Canons of 1603/4.
gibson’s codex iuris anglicani
October 3, 2025 at 8:52 AM
adambforsyth.bsky.social
It seems important to me that many of those in Britain who most clearly believed in some form of human equality were strongly in favor of the American Revolution, which encouraged their hopes for a more humane world. E.g. the Unitarian minister John Disney and John Jebb (both abolitionist):
• I extract this from an elegant and animated encomium. " He, with the divine Milton, thought no exertion was loft. This [maxim] was the guide of his practice; is replete with good sense and philofophy ; and has even had the fanction of obfervation and experience. Nor was he totally difappointed. He lived to see tyranny defeated, and the seeds of freedom planted in another world. He lived to see the principles of liberty propagated far and wide; and that knowledge, with which his own mind was peculiarly illuminated, diffused to an extent for which he could scarcely have hoped."
September 25, 2025 at 9:50 AM
adambforsyth.bsky.social
For those curious about the early development of ideas regarding the rule of law, personal liberty, remedies for wrongful imprisonment (such as habeas corpus), and the relationship between law and sovereign power—among many other things—it may be of interest. @historicaljnl.bsky.social
Quotation from article, reading: “and yet, 'if such imprisonments' by High Commission precept 'were to be lawful, then the subject might be in perpetual prison by the pleasure of the commissioners and would ave no ordinary remedy for his deliverance'. That, held the court, 'would be unacceptable and greatly against the liberty of the subject'. Coke concluded his entry with the finding that the commission's letters patent were limited by the force of statute. 'The queen', said the judges, could not 'by her letters patent alone alter the course either of the ecclesiastical law or of the common law'. 'For every subject has an inheritance and interest in the laws by which he is governed', one that 'may not be abrogated, altered or changed except by act of Parliament'. The court affirmed what had been said in the reign of Henry IV: 'neither the king nor the pope may change the law'.”
June 16, 2025 at 4:22 PM
adambforsyth.bsky.social
My first article, ‘England’s Erastus? Or, James Morice and the Law of Excommunication’ is now out on FirstView with The Historical Journal.

doi.org/10.1017/S001...
Screen capture of article title and abstract: England's Erastus? Or, James Morice and the Law of Excommunication Adam B. Forsyth Faculty of History, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK Abstract The Elizabethan reign has lately emerged as a formative period for English ideas about the liberties of the subject and the 'ancient constitution' of the realm. Recent work has described the development of such ideas as having been driven by an organized campaign against the English ecclesiastical courts: a legal and intellectual effort that had emerged from the misgivings of certain 'puritan' lawyers about the powers claimed by new prerogative jurisdictions. The primary grievance of the campaign has been identified as having been the church courts' use of the oath ex officio, and the campaign's primary defensive tool has been identified as having been the twenty-ninth chapter of Magna Carta. But overlooked manuscripts reveal a more complex story. This article shows that the law of excommunication was as important to the campaign in question as Magna Carta. In addition, a re-examination of the life and work of James Morice, one of the principal lawyers responsible for the campaign, demonstrates that the law of excommunication deeply structured his understanding of the royal supremacy, and of the legal relationship between England's secular and ecclesiastical polities - particularly as they had existed in the distant medieval past. [Introduction] Where did English 'ancient constitutionalism' come from? How did the medieval common law begin to be associated with personal liberty in early modern England; and how did certain conceptions of freedom start to become an integral part of what (for some) it meant to be English? Seeking to answer these questions, among others,
June 16, 2025 at 4:05 PM
adambforsyth.bsky.social
Not only too early, but too few chins to be Richard Bentley:
April 28, 2025 at 2:19 PM
adambforsyth.bsky.social
Consider, for example, this Bible.
It was printed in 1629.
Title page of 1629 English edition of the New Testament printed at Cambridge.
April 28, 2025 at 2:06 PM
adambforsyth.bsky.social
May I call the attention of those concerned to the emblem of the University of Cambridge?

The world’s oldest academic publisher has used it for over four centuries in its books. It has often adorned title pages.

‘HINC LVCEM ET POCVLA SACRA’
Emblem of the University of Cambridge.
April 28, 2025 at 1:51 PM
adambforsyth.bsky.social
Come and learn about legal history this Easter Term!

It will be legal! It will be historical! An Education Sensation! Etc.
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE EASTER TERM 2025 6 May 17:15 Room LG17 Law Faculty DR LAURA FLANNIGAN St John's College, University of Oxford Manuscript Miscellanies and Lay Legal Literacy, c. 1450-1600: the Evidence of Personal Formularies 20 May 17:15 Room LG17 Law Faculty 3 June 17.15 Junior Parlour Trinity College 17 June 17:15 Junior Parlour Trinity College DR LORREN ELDRIDGE Queens College, University of Cambridge The Drafting of the Law of Property Act 1925 PROFESSOR CIARA KENNEFICK Christ Church, University of Oxford Laesio Enormis and the Politics of the French Revolution PROFESSOR LUKASZ KORPOROWICZ University of Lode Blackstone, Law of Property, and Continental Legal Tradition
April 24, 2025 at 8:19 AM
adambforsyth.bsky.social
Nicholas Fuller, unsurprisingly, also said: no, the King cannot thus impose such tariffs, it being (amongst other things) against Magna Carta so to do:
that all customs granted since i Edward i shall be taken away non obstante Charta Mercator because it is against the great Charter; and according to that good precedent,*® I hope that it will be granted by this parliament that all new customs or impositions granted or any way encroached upon the subjects' goods or merchandise without parliament since the first year of Edward I shall be taken away as then they were, notwithstanding Charta Mercatoria" or any grant, ordi-nance, or judgment in the Exchequer or elsewhere had or made since that time, sith that the same appear to be contrary to the laws of the realm and directly contrary to the great Charter, which laws having once a settled allowance cannot be altered, changed, or made void by act of prince or peo-ple, but by mutual consent in parliament [fol. 64] of prince and people as all learned men know. And therefore when there was occasion and complaint made in parliament by the Commons at one time against the Lord Latimer and another time against one Richard Lyons for causing of impositions to be laid upon the merchants' goods without consent of parliament,3 neither those persons who were accused, nor any of the King's learned counsel at law did or could justify the same to be lawfully done by color of the prerogative or otherwise, but they were both punished for their so doing although that the same impositions were laid to continue for a very short time and in case of great necessities, whereas the impositions of late laid upon merchants' goods without the consent of parliament (now complained of) is excessive great and expressed to continue forever or at the least without any limitation of time, whereof the like was never seen in this land to the knowledge of us that profess the law. And it is manifest that according to the said rule of law and right
April 8, 2025 at 3:31 AM
adambforsyth.bsky.social
Hakewill thought very hard about the question, and also decided that the answer had to be that no: the King could not of his own power impose such tariffs thus:
April 8, 2025 at 3:22 AM
adambforsyth.bsky.social
Indeed, here is James Whitelocke on whether the King has the power to impose such tariffs without consent in 1610.

Whitelocke says no—the King cannot do so—in even starker terms:
I think he cannot, and I ground my opinion upon these four reasons. I. It is against the natural frame and constitution of the policy of this kingdom, which is jus publicum regni, and so subverteth the fundamental law of the realm and induceth a new form of State and government. 2. It is against the municipal law of the land, which is jus privatum, the law of property and of private right. 3. It is against divers statutes made to restrain our King in this point. 4. It is against the practice and action of our commonwealth, contra morem majorem, and this is the modestest rule to limit both King's prerogatives and subjects' liberties…
April 8, 2025 at 3:18 AM
adambforsyth.bsky.social
Here is Heneage Finch (1580–1631) speaking in the Parliament of 1610 on the legality of tariffs imposed without consent:
And though there might be cause to impose upon some foreign merchandise upon occasion, none of these considerations of policy do enforce a necessity that the king should therefore have power to impose without parliament; for where it hath been objected that the cause may be so sudden that it cannot stay for a parliament, I answer there is no cause of such imagination, when for 200 years together we find but one imposition laid upon such occasion and that in parliament. (Vide statute 7 H.7, c.8)."
April 8, 2025 at 2:52 AM