amassing too much power and ultimately undermine the
very foundations of pluralism. Thus the notion that there
were limits and restraints on rulers, the essence of the rule
of law, was part of the logic of pluralism engendered by the
broad coalition that made up the opposition to Stuart
absolutism.
In this light, it should be no surprise that the principle of
the rule of law, coupled with the notion that monarchs did
not have divine rights, was in fact a key argument against
Stuart absolutism. As the British historian E. P. Thompson
put it, in the struggle against the Stuart monarchs:
immense efforts were made … to project the
image of a ruling class which was itself
subject to the rule of law, and whose
legitimacy rested upon the equity and
universality of those legal forms. And the
rulers were, in serious senses, whether
willingly or unwillingly, the prisoners of their
own rhetoric; they played games of power
according to rules which suited them, but they
could not break those rules or the whole
game would be thrown away.
Throwing the game away would destabilize the system
and open the way for absolutism by a subset of the broad
coalition or even risk the return of the Stuarts. In
Thompson’s words, what inhibited Parliament from creating
a new absolutism was that
take
away law,
and
the
royal
prerogative … might flood back upon their
properties and lives.
Moreover,
it was inherent in the very nature of the
medium which they [those aristocrats,
merchants etc. fighting the Crown] had
selected for their own self-defense that it
could not be reserved for the exclusive use
only of their own class. The law, in its forms
and traditions, entailed principles of equity