Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: a fierce contest between the king and the Parliament. The Stuart kings claimed the right by royal decree to set aside laws passed by Parliament. They also claimed the right to collect taxes without its sanction. In 1649 Charles I. was condemned to death by a special court created by act of Parliament. In 1688 James II. was driven out of England. The following year William III. was made king of England, and James and his heirs were excluded from the throne by act of Parliament. By these and other acts the Parliament has gained supremacy over the crown. CHAPTER II. ORIGIN OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS. Local Governments Transplanted. — When the English founded colonies in America there existed in England: 1. The township with its substitutes and modified forms, the manor, the parish, and the borough, town, or city. 2. The hundred; which had lost much of its former importance. 3. The county or shire, whose government had been taken out of the hands of the ancient representatives from townships and hundreds, and had been committed to justices of the peace, appointed by the king. The former representative county court had been replaced by a court composed of justices and juries which met four times a year, and was called the Court of Quarter Sessions. All these institutions and their names were transplanted to the New World. Temporary Institutions. — Some of the local governments transplanted to America have been given up. 1. The Hundred. When Ferdinand Gorges made provision for the government of the colony to be planted in Maine, he speaks of dividing the country into eight counties, while each county was to be divided into sixteen hundreds. There is also allusion to the subdivision of hundreds into parishes. But the hundreds never appeared. In the charter given to William Penn,...