Abstract
The Ciceronian maxim salus populi, suprema lex was regularly invoked by writers justifying Parliament's war against Charles I. Quentin Skinner has seen this axiom as integral to the notion of ‘neo‐Roman’ liberty. However, as Johann Sommerville has recently demonstrated, in both early modern and classical contexts, salus populi was often used to justify the ‘arbitrary’ power of the sovereign. This essay traces the implications of one absolutist reading of this classical tag in Robert Sanderson's ‘Case of the Liturgy’: a case of conscience justifying amending the church liturgy in order to conform to the requirements of the Parliament's Directory (1645). The posthumous publication of Sanderson's case in the Restoration period reveals the ambiguity of this axiom, which was used, via Sanderson, to justify both the dispensing and suspending power of James II and giving obedience to William and Mary in the wake of the Revolution of 1688–9.
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