Monarchs and the limits of royal power, 1610–1725

At the time when your Majesty resolved to admit me to your council and to an important place in your confidence and in the direction of your affairs, I may say that the Huguenots shared the State with you; that the nobles conducted themselves as if they were not your subjects, and the most powerful governors of the provinces as if they were sovereign in their offices. . . .

I promised your Majesty to employ all my industry and all the authority which it should please you to give me to ruin the Huguenot party, to abase the pride of the nobles, to bring back all your subjects to their duty, and to elevate your name among foreign nations to the point where it belongs.

[B]y other laws of this realm . . . your subjects have inherited this freedom, that they should not be compelled to contribute to any tax, tallage [a kind of tax], aid, or other like charge, not set by common consent in Parliament: Yet nevertheless, of late divers commissions directed to sundry Commissioners in several counties with instructions have issued, by means whereof your people have been in divers places assembled, and required to lend certain sums of money unto your Majesty, and many of them upon their refusal so to do, have had an oath administered unto them, not warrantable by the laws or statutes of this realm . . . and others of them have been therefore imprisoned, confined, and sundry other ways molested and disquieted. . . .

They do therefore humbly pray your Most Excellent Majesty, that no man hereafter be compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge, without common consent by Act of Parliament; . . . and that no freeman, in any such manner as is before-mentioned, be imprisoned or detained. . . .

[D]uring the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war, as is of every man, against every man. . . . [In that condition there is] continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. . . .

The only way to erect such a common power . . . is, to confer all their power and strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will. . . . This is the generation of that great Leviathan, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that mortal god, to which we owe under the immortal God, our peace and defence. . . .

[T]hey that are subjects to a monarch, cannot without his leave cast off monarchy, and return to the confusion of a disunited multitude.

But kings, although their power comes from on high, as has been said, should not regard themselves as masters of that power to use it at their pleasure; . . . they must employ it with fear and self-restraint, as a thing coming from God and of which God will demand an account. . . .

The royal power is absolute. . . . The prince need render account of his acts to no one. . . . Without this absolute authority the king could neither do good nor repress evil. . . .

The prince, as prince, is not regarded as a private person; he is a public personage; all the State is in him; the will of all the people is included in his. . . . Look at the prince in his cabinet. Thence go out the orders which cause the magistrates and the captains, the citizens and the soldiers, the provinces and the armies on land and on sea, to work in concert.

Nothing could be regulated with greater exactitude than were his days and hours. . . . Except at Marly [a royal residence], any man could have an opportunity to speak to him five or six times during the day; he listened, and almost always replied, "I will see," in order not to accord or decide anything lightly. . . .

Louis XIV's vanity was without limit or restraint; it colored everything . . . . Hence those pictures and inscriptions in the gallery at Versailles which disgust every foreigner; . . . hence his distaste for all merit, intelligence, education, and, most of all, for all independence of character and sentiment in others; . . . and, above everything else, a jealousy of his own authority which determined and took precedence of every other sort of justice, reason, and consideration whatever.

It is both certain and evident to all Men, That the Publick Peace and happiness of any State or Kingdom cannot be preserved where the Laws, Liberties, and Customs Established by the Lawful Authority in it are openly transgressed and annulled . . . .

[W]e see that those Counsellors, who have now the chief Credit with the King, have overturned the Religion, Laws, and Liberties of these Realms, and subjected them, in all things relating to their Consciences, Liberties, and Properties, to Arbitrary Government . . . .

Those Evil Counsellors have also prevailed with the King to declare in Scotland, That he is cloathed with Absolute Power, and that all the Subjects are bound to Obey him without Reserve: Upon which he assumed an Arbitrary Power both over the Religion and Laws of the Kingdom; from all of which it's apparent what is to be looked for in England as soon as Matters are duly prepared for it.

The Tsar, in order to reform that custom [of wearing long beards], ordered that gentlemen, merchants, and other subjects, except priests and peasants, should each pay a tax of one hundred rubles a year if they wished to keep their beards; the commoners had to pay one kopeck each. Officials were stationed at the gates of the towns to collect that tax, which the Russians regarded as an enormous sin on the part of the Tsar and as a thing which tended to the abolition of their religion.

These insinuations, which came from the priests, occasioned the publication of many pamphlets in Moscow, where for that reason alone the Tsar was regarded as a tyrant and a pagan . . . .

The Tsar issued an ordinance abolishing that costume [long robes], commanding all the boyars (nobles) and all those who had positions at the court to dress after the French fashion . . . .