ABSTRACT
the great majority of Englishmen who reflected on the nature of their government during the civil-war period accepted either the theory of mixed government or the closely related mixed monarchy as the fundamental principle of the English constitution. Any assurance needed on this point could be secured from Charles Ps readily accessible, authoritative discourse on the constitution with its extraordinarily influential definition of the three estates. His Majesties Answer to the XIX. Propositions of both Houses of Parliament, bearing the royal seal, circulated in London, Oxford, Cambridge, and York. The King had ordered that the text of the Answer to the Nineteen Propositions be read in both Houses ; and, in all liklihood, it was also made public in the churches and chapels of England and Wales as he had ordered despite the efforts of the two Houses to prevent this publicity. Moreover, the royal discourse on the constitution inspired numerous commentaries, such as the Political Catechism, that fed the gathering stream of admiration for mixed government during the remainder of the century. 1
