The Pursuit of Certainty. Shirley Robin Letwin

them. But in fact there were many precedents for arbitrariness, while, at the same time, the people were wanting more liberty.² As a result, the “throne perpetually tottered”³ and the smallest mistake was bound to be fatal; even after the event, it was difficult to say what should have been done. A king deficient in political prudence had not a chance. There were many parallel instances in history. Much the same sort of circumstances had brought down Edward II. His father, despite his violent invasions of liberty, had met with few difficulties. But the son lacked the skill to manage under a constitution that depended mainly on the king’s personal character. When custom was uncertain the king ought not to be held responsible for all the misfortunes that followed. Kings should be judged only on their willingness to be ruled by custom:

      It is a shameful delusion in modern historians, to imagine that all the ancient princes who were unfortunate in their government, were also tyrannical in their conduct, and that the seditions of the people always proceeded from some invasion of their privileges by the monarch … always to throw, without distinction, the blame of all disorders upon the sovereign, would introduce a fatal error in politics, and serve as a perpetual apology for treason and rebellion; as if the turbulence of the great, and madness of the people, were not equally with the tyranny of princes, evils incident to human society, and no less carefully to be guarded against in every well-regulated constitution.⁴

      For Charles II, however, Hume had no sympathy. The monarchy, when he ascended the throne, was definitely limited, and the prerogatives he and his successor claimed were well beyond the law as it had by then been defined. But the docile parliament of James II, with its “violent aversion” to opposition which kept it for so long from displaying “some small remains of English spirit and generosity,”¹