[Footnote 66: 1 Campbell, Justices, 311; 2 Parl. Hist. 245, 350, 373, 408, _et al._; 3 St. Tr. 59.] [Footnote 67: See above, p. 29.] [Footnote 68: 1 Campbell's Justices, 315.] 4. In 1634 Charles I. issued a writ levying ship-money, so called, on some seaport towns, without act of Parliament. London and some towns remonstrated, but were forced to submit, all the courts being against them. Chief Justice Finch, "a servile tool of the despotic court," generalized this unlawful tax, extending it to inland towns as well as seaboard, to all the kingdom. All landholders were to be assessed in proportion to their property, and the tax, if not voluntarily paid, collected by force. The tax was unpopular, and clearly against the fundamental law of the kingdom. But if the government could not get the law on its side it could control its interpreters, for "every law hath its exposition." So the Judges of Assize were ordered in their circuits to tell the people to _comply with the order and pay the money_! The King got all extrajudicial opinion of the twelve Judges delivered irregularly, out of court, in which they unanimously declared that in time of danger the _King might levy such tax as he saw fit, and compel men to pay it_. He was the sole judge of the danger, and of the amount of the tax.[69] [Footnote 69: 3 St. Tr. 825. See the opinion of the Judges with their twelve names, 844, and note [dagger symbol].] John Hampden was taxed twenty shillings--he refused to pay, though he knew well the fate of Richard Chambers a few years before. The case came to trial in 1637, in the Court of Exchequer before Lord Chancellor Coventry, a base creature, mentioned before. It was "the great case of Ship-money." The ablest lawyers in England showed that the tax was contrary to Magna Charta, to the fundamental laws of the realm, to the Petition of Right and to the practice of the kingdom. Hampden was defeated. Ten out of the twelve Judges sided with the King. Croke as the eleventh had made up his mind to do the same, but his noble wife implored him not to sacrifice his conscience for fear of danger, and the Woman, as it so often happens, saved the man.[70] Attorney-General Banks thus set forth the opinion of the Government, and the consequent "decision" of the Judges. He rested the right of levying Ship-money on the "intrinsic, absolute authority of the King." There was no Higher Law in Old England in 1634! Banks said, "this power [of arbitrary and irresponsible taxation] is innate in the person of an absolute King, and in the persons of the Kings of England. All-magistracy it is of nature; and obedience and subjection [to] it is of nature. This power is not anyways derived from the people, but reserved unto the King when positive laws first began. For the King of England, he is an absolute monarch; nothing can be given to an absolute prince but what is inherent in his person. He can do no wrong. He is the sole judge and we ought not to question him, whom the