Ship Money and Mr Justice Hutton

The 'greatest cause according to the general opinion of the world ... ever heard out of Parliament in England' was how one contemporary characterised the trial of Rex v. Hampden before the Court of Exchequer Chamber in October 1637. Among the twelve judges hearing this test case on the legality of ship money was the elderly Sir Richard Hutton, who for the past twenty years had served both King Charles I and his father James as a justice of Common Pleas.

Even before his promotion to the judicial bench, Hutton had been accustomed to record significant happenings in the common-law world and the public realm generally, employing the same abbreviated law French jargon that he used for his legal case notes. Hutton's diary or journal now provides a unique and hitherto largely unexplored perspective on the legal and political history of early Stuart England. It also helps to explain why Hutton himself was one of only two judges prepared to dissent on grounds of principle from the Crown's asserted right to levy ship money as a regular charge without parliamentary consent.