12th February 2026
History rhymes.
Sometimes it is the historians that rhyme in how they write their histories; sometimes even it is actually the events themselves that rhyme.
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When President Trump sought this week to bring criminal charges against six members of Congress this seemed to rhyme with when Charles I sought to arrest five members of Parliament (and a oft-forgotten peer) in 1642.
The latter event, which may not have seemed that significant in the hectic rush of events in 1642, as the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland moved further towards what we call the civil war(s) – but it certainly gained symbolic importance later.
It is why even now the door of the House of Commons is slammed shut in the face of the king’s messenger at the state opening of Parliament.
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What the 1642 and the 2026 events have in common are at least two things.
First, the ruler (king/president) believed that targeting a handful of political opponents with the coercive powers of law would serve some useful political purpose.
Second, both the 1642 and 2026 attempts failed.
What the 1642 and the 2026 attempts do not have in common is why they failed.
In 1642, the targeted opponents were able to escape before the arrest attempt.
But in 2026, the targeted opponents were saved by the grand jury that procedurally has to endorse any indictment.
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This blog is a great fan of juries.
Not all juries are the same – in different legal systems (and sometimes within a legal system) juries fulfil different functions.
But one thing juries tend to have in common is that they make decisions which, but for a jury, would be made by someone else.
In essence, juries take key decisions out of the hands of those who may be minded differently.
In England we do not have grand juries deciding on indictments, though that would not be a bad idea.
In England we do have jury trials under frequent attack from government – the current pretext for “reform” is “efficiency”.
But as I aver over at Prospect – CLICK HERE, in a phrase which blog has often used: juries are important not so much for the powers they have, but for the powers they prevent others from having.
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in support of juries . . . and this blog :
. . . in his 1956 Hamlyn Lectures (Trial by Jury), Lord Patrick Devlin—a Law Lord—called “jury equity” “an insurance that the criminal law will conform to the ordinary man’s idea of what is fair and just.”
Interestingly I learnt recently that a jury can refuse to convict, guided by conscience and without giving reasons—and that forces the executive to govern with one eye on what ordinary citizens will tolerate when liberty is on the line.
Lord Devlin put it bluntly: “I know of no other real checks that exist today upon the power of the executive.”
The check matters even more when the senior judiciary is drawn from a relatively narrow slice of the country. As of April 2025, 65% of High Court and above posts were held by White male judges.
Patrick, Lord Devlin was also the author of an article in the newly-hatched “Sunday Telegraph”, entitled “When ignorance of the law may be an excuse”. I was so impressed that I cut it out and put it in a scrapbook, since lost, so I can’t quote his arguments. But the title alone should be enough to convince anyone that he was a good bloke.