The circumstances of its delayed publication, in 1635, suggest that during the early 1630s Selden inclined towards the court rather than the popular party and even secured the personal favour of the king, Charles I. It had been written sixteen or seventeen years earlier, but for political reasons Charles's predecessor, James I, had prohibited its publication. When it eventually appeared, a quarter of a century after "Mare liberum", it was under Charles's royal patronage, as a kind of state paper, and with a dedication to him. The fact that Selden was not retained in the great case of ship money in 1637 by John Hampden, the cousin of Sir Edmund, his former client in the Five Knights' Case, may be taken as additional evidence that his zeal for the popular cause was neither so warm nor so unquestioned as it had once been.