After laying this solid foundation for the maintenance of such laws as they might deem necessary, the house of commons proceeded to cut away the more flagrant and recent usurpations of the Crown. They passed a bill declaring ship-money illegal, and annulling the judgment of the exchequer chamber against Mr. Hampden.[166] They put an end to another contested prerogative, which, though incapable of vindication on any legal authority, had more support from a usage of fourscore years, the levying of customs on merchandise. In an act granting the king tonnage and poundage, it is declared and enacted that it is, and hath been, the ancient right of the subjects of this realm, that no subsidy, custom, impost, or other charge whatsoever, ought or may be laid or imposed upon any merchandise exported or imported by subjects, denizens or aliens, without common consent in parliament.[167] This is the last statute that has been found necessary to restrain the Crown from arbitrary taxation, and may be deemed the complement of those numerous provisions which the virtue of ancient times had extorted from the first and third Edwards. Yet these acts were hardly so indispensable, nor wrought so essential a change in the character of our monarchy, as that which abolished the star-chamber. Though it was evident how little the statute of Henry VII. could bear out that overweening power it had since arrogated, though the statute-book and parliamentary records of the best ages were irrefragable testimonies against its usurpations; yet the course of precedents under the Tudor and Stuart families were so invariable that nothing more was at first intended than a bill to regulate that tribunal. A suggestion, thrown out, as Clarendon informs us, by one not at all connected with the more ardent reformers, led to the substitution of a bill for taking it altogether away.[168] This abrogates all exercise of jurisdiction, properly so called, whether of a civil or criminal nature, by the privy-council, as well as the star-chamber. The power of examining and committing persons charged with offences is by no means taken away; but, with a retrospect to the language held by the judges and Crown lawyers in some cases that have been mentioned, it is enacted that every person committed by the council or any of them, or by the king's special command, may have his writ of habeas corpus; in the return to which, the officer in whose custody he is shall certify the true cause of his commitment, which the court, from whence the writ has issued, shall within three days examine, in order to see whether the cause thus certified appear to be just and legal or not, and do justice accordingly by delivering, bailing, or remanding the party. Thus fell the great court of star-chamber; and with it the whole irregular and arbitrary practice of government, that had for several centuries so thwarted the operation and obscured the light of our free constitution, that many