Haberdashers: Freedom Fighters? Dr John Wigley “Put not your trust in princes …” (Psalm 146 verse 3) On 24 September 2019 Lady Hale, wearing a black dress with a spider brooch pinned to its right shoulder, the President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, gave its eleven members’ unanimous verdict that “Parliament has not been prorogued.” The Prime Minister’s advice to Her Majesty the Queen to prorogue Parliament was unlawful, the Order in Council declaring Parliament prorogued was unlawful, and when the Commissioners entered the House of Lords bearing the Order to announce that both Houses were prorogued it “was as if they had walked in carrying a blank piece of paper.” Parliament was still in session and the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lord Speaker of the House of Lords should immediately and lawfully reconvene MPs and Peers. Some constitutional historians and lawyers recognised that the Court’s verdict was, as Lady Hale said, based in large part on the Case of Proclamations (1611) that “the King hath no prerogative but that which the law of the land allows him” but only a few cognoscenti knew that Lady Hale was married to an Old Haberdasher, Julian Farrand, that Lord Pannick QC, whose arguments in Court had done much to secure the verdict, had sent his three sons to Habs, or that the 2019 was the four hundredth anniversary of the school’s founder, Robert Aske, born on 24 February 1619. The Prime Minister had wanted to govern without Parliament in order to avoid further challenge, debate, discussion and dispute on the problematic and rocky road to Brexit. It was a motive well-known to seventeenth century monarchs. For example, apart from two months in 1614 James I reigned without Parliament from 1611 t0 1621, Charles I from 1629 to 1640, and Charles II from 1681 to 1685. The most difficult problems they faced were demands for political and religious freedom often based on – or justified by – appeals to the Bible, more widely available after the publication of the Authorised Version in 1611, then believed by most English men and women to be an accurate historical record, one which members of the puritan movement were convinced did not justify the authoritarian rule of king and aristocracy or bishops and clergy of the Church of England. Haberdashers, some virtually unknown, others prominent members of the Company, and the Company itself, were involved in those often dangerous disputes. During the 1620’s Daniel and Katherine Chidley, established a breakaway congregation in Shrewsbury and were fined for refusing to attend the Anglican parish church, as demanded by the 1559 Act of Uniformity. In 1629 they moved to London, where Daniel
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