Closing the Sea - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 22

border in Kent. There is no evidence of any truth to this doubtful claim, but it was
strong enough for her son to apply for, and be granted, the right to use their triple-
swan coat of arms later in life. Young John displayed such brilliance at school that
his teachers passed him up from one to the next all the way to Oxford. After four
yearsattheuniversity,SeldenabandonedOxfordforLondon,andtheacademiclife
for training in law. In 1604 he was admitted to the Inner Temple, one of the four
Inns of Court, where young men prepared to qualify as barristers. Three years be-
forehewascalledtothebarin1612,theInnerTemplepassedanewrulethat'none
shouldbeadmittedofthisHousebutthoseofgoodParentageandBehaviour'.One
wonders whether the rule would have touched the son of John Selden the Minstrel
had he arrived half a dozen years later than he did. And now in 1618 the minstrel's
son was commanded to appear before the king.
What brought Selden to the king's attention was his most recent topic, The His-
torie of Tithes .Ithadcapturedtheattentionofeducatedreaders,goingthroughsev-
eral printings in its first year: impressive for a young, unknown scholar. It might
be hard for us to imagine how five hundred pages on the history of ecclesiastical
tithes could open up a gush of controversy, but this topic certainly did so. Its argu-
ment was that the right of the Church to collect levies from parishioners was not
divinely ordained. These levies or tithes were paid on the basis of a contractual re-
lationship between the Church and the people. God did not command that this be
done.Churchmen wereappalled: Selden,theyfelt,hadpulledasidethecurtain and
shown them manipulating levers as though God had nothing to do with what they
claimed was theirs. Some of them wanted Selden's head on a figurative platter.
The trouble did not stop there. The buried bomb in the topic was the argument
that there was no divine right of anything, starting with the bishops but leading ul-
timately to the king. James I was not the king to welcome this revision. Fancying
himself a Renaissance man, James wrote learned essays on political and moral is-
sues that he thought were rather good and that his subjects should read. His par-
ticular favourite was The True Law of Free Monarchies , a treatise he published in
Edinburgh while still James VI of Scotland, then twice in London after becoming
JamesIofEngland,onceuponhisaccessionin1603andthenagainin1616.Being
ofastubbornandunimaginativedisposition,Jamesgetsintoabitofatangletrying
to justify obedience to tyrannical kings, but the general messages are clear. First of
all, kings rule as God's representatives: God appoints them to administer the world
on His behalf. Second, in his words, kings are 'the authors and makers of the laws,
and not the laws of the kings'. Selden was too thorough a constitutional lawyer not