Petition of Right - Petition of Right

Petition of Right

After setting out a list of individual grievances and statutes that had been broken, the Petition of Right declares that Englishmen have various "rights and liberties", and provides that no person should be forced to provide a gift, loan or tax without an Act of Parliament, that no free individual should be imprisoned or detained unless a cause has been shown, and that soldiers or members of the Royal Navy should not be billeted in private houses without the free consent of the owner. In relation to martial law, the Petition first repeated the due process chapter of Magna Carta, and then provided that:

Nevertheless, of late divers commissions under Your Majesty's great seal have issued forth, by which certain powers have been assigned and appointed commissioners, with power and authority to proceed within the land according to the justice of martial law against such soldiers and marines or other dissolute persons going with them as should commit robbery murder, etc...and by such summary course and order as is used by armies in time of war, to proceed to the trial and condemnation of such offenders, and to cause them to be executed and put to death according to the law martial...We do humbly pray, Your most excellent Majesty...that the aforesaid commissions...may be revoked and anulled; and that hereafter no commission of like nature may issue forth to any person or persons whatsoever to be executed as aforesaid, lest by color of them any of Your Majesty's be destroyed or put to death contrary to the laws or practises of the land.

This clause was directly addressed to the various commissions issued by Charles and his military commanders, restricting the use of martial law except in war or direct rebellion and prohibiting the formation of commissions. A state of war automatically activated martial law; as such, the only purpose for commissions, in their view, was to unjustly permit martial law in circumstances that did not require it.