Purveyance and preëmption were also methods of taxation, unequal, arbitrary, and oppressive. The whole kingdom sensibly felt the burden of those impositions; and it was regarded as a great privilege conferred on Oxford and Cambridge, to prohibit the purveyors from taking any commodities within five miles of these universities. The queen victualled her navy by means of this prerogative, during the first years of he reign.[**]
Wardship was the most regular and legal of all these impositions by prerogative; yet was it a great badge of slavery and oppressive to all the considerable families. When an estate devolved to a female, the sovereign obliged her to marry anyone he pleased: whether the heir were male or female, the crown enjoyed the whole profit of the estate during the minority. The giving of a rich wardship was a usual method of rewarding a courtier or favorite.
The inventions were endless which arbitrary power might employ for the extorting of money, while the people imagined that their property was secured by the crown’s being debarred from imposing taxes. Strype has preserved a speech of Lord Burleigh to the queen and council, in which are contained some particulars not a little extraordinary.[***]
* Strype’s Memoirs, vol. i. p. 137.
** Camden, p. 388.
*** Annals, vol. iv. p. 234 et seq.
Burleigh proposes, that she should erect a court for the correction of all abuses, and should confer on the commissioners a general inquisitorial power over the whole kingdom. He sets before her the example of her wise grandfather, Henry VII., who by such methods extremely augmented his revenue; and he recommends that this new court should proceed, “as well by the direction and ordinary course of the laws, as by virtue of her majesty’s supreme regiment and absolute power, from whence law proceeded.” In a word, he expects from this institution greater accession to the royal treasure than Henry VIII. derived from the abolition of the abbeys, and all the forfeitures of ecclesiastical revenues. This project of Lord Burleigh’s needs not, I think, any comment. A form of government must be very arbitrary indeed, where a wise and good minister could make such a proposal to the sovereign.
Embargoes on merchandise was another engine of royal power, by which the English princes were able to extort money from the people. We have seen instances in the reign of Mary. Elizabeth, before her coronation, issued an order to the custom-house, prohibiting the sale of all crimson silks which should be imported, till the court were first supplied.[*] She expected, no doubt, a good pennyworth from the merchants while they lay under this restraint.
The parliament pretended to the right of enacting laws, as well as of granting subsidies; but this privilege was, during that age, still more insignificant than the other. Queen Elizabeth expressly prohibited them from meddling either with state matters or ecclesiastical causes; and she openly sent the members to prison who dared to transgress her imperial edict in these particulars. There passed few sessions of parliament, during her reign where there occur not instances of this arbitrary conduct.
But the legislative power of the parliament was a mere fallacy, while the sovereign was universally acknowledged to possess a dispensing power, by which all the laws could be invalidated, and rendered of no effect. The exercise of this power was also an indirect method practised for erecting monopolies. Where the statutes laid any branch of manufacture under restrictions, the sovereign, by exempting one person from the laws, gave him in effect the monopoly of that commodity.[**] There was no grievance at that time more universally complained of, than the frequent dispensing with the penal laws.[***]
But in reality the crown possessed the full legislative power, by means of proclamations, which might affect any matter, even of the greatest importance, and which the star chamber took care to see more rigorously executed than the laws themselves. The motives for these proclamations were sometimes frivolous, and even ridiculous. Queen Elizabeth had taken offence at the smell of woad; and she issued an edict prohibiting any one from cultivating that useful plant.[****]
* Strype, vol. i. p. 27.
** Rymer, tom. xv. p. 756. D’Ewes, p. 645.
*** Murden, p. 325.
**** Townsend’s Journals, p. 250. Stow’s Annals.