Sir John Willes was an English judge and politician, who served both in the House of Commons and as Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. In this pamphlet, published anonymously, Willes presents typically Whiggish theories of English constitutional history, kingship, and the meaning of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Structured as a refutation of a Jacobite book, The Present Constitution is representative of a fundamental shift in Anglo-American political history: a full restoration of the monarchy's former powers, as desired by Tories and non-jurors, was no longer tenable. The political imagination of the English people had shifted altogether too much in the intervening fifty between the death of Charles I and the opening of the new century. "Since then the Hereditary Right of the Crown of England is plainly a Creature of the Law, and subject to a Law meerly [sic] human, it follows... that the Legislative Power of the Nation have an Authority to limit and bind the Crown, and the Descent and Inheritance thereof." References: ESTC T44208.

Small Octavo, xviii, 82 pages. In Good condition. Dis-bound pamphlet, with residual of former binding to spine edge. Pages show light foxing and age-toning overall, with pp. iii-xiv loose but intact. RW Consignment. Shelved case 7