[546] "On Sunday, before the king's going to Newmarket (which was Sunday last was a se'nnight), my Lord Coke and all the judges of the common law were before his majesty to answer some complaints made by the civil lawyers for the general granting of prohibitions. I heard that the Lord Coke, amongst other offensive speech, should say to his majesty that his highness was defended by his laws. At which saying, with other speech then used by the Lord Coke, his majesty was very much offended, and told him he spoke foolishly, and said that he was not defended by his laws, but by God, and so gave the Lord Coke, in other words, a very sharp reprehension, both for that and other things; and withal told him that Sir Thomas Crompton (judge of the admiralty) was as good a man as Coke; my Lord Coke having then, by way of exception, used some speech against Sir Thomas Crompton. Had not my lord treasurer, most humbly on his knee, used many good words to pacify his majesty and to excuse that which had been spoken, it was thought his highness would have been much more offended. In the conclusion, his majesty, by the means of my lord treasurer, was well pacified, and gave a gracious countenance to all the other judges, and said he would maintain the common law." Lodge, iii. 364. The letter is dated 25th November 1608, which shows how early Coke had begun to give offence by his zeal for the law.
[547] 12 Reports. In his second Institute, p. 57, written a good deal later, he speaks in a very different manner of Bates's case, and declares the judgment of the court of exchequer to be contrary to law.
[548] 12 Reports. There were, however, several proclamations afterwards to forbid building within two miles of London, except on old foundations, and in that case only with brick or stone, under penalty of being proceeded against by the attorney-general in the star-chamber. Rymer, xvii. 107 (1618), 144 (1619), 607 (1624). London nevertheless increased rapidly, which was by means of licences to build; the prohibition being in this, as in many other cases enacted chiefly for the sake of the dispensations.
James made use of proclamations to infringe personal liberty in another respect. He disliked to see any country-gentleman come up to London, where, it must be confessed, if we trust to what those proclamations assert and the memoirs of the age confirm, neither their own behaviour, nor that of their wives and daughters, who took the worst means of repairing the ruin their extravagance had caused, redounded to their honour. The king's comparison of them to ships in a river and in the sea is well known. Still, in a constitutional point of view, we may be startled at proclamations commanding them to return to their country-houses and maintain hospitality, on pain of condign punishment. Rymer, xvi. 517 (1604); xvii. 417 (1622), 632 (1624).
I neglected, in the first chapter, the reference I had made to an important dictum of the judges in the reign of Mary, which is decisive as to the legal character of proclamations even in the midst of the Tudor period. "The king, it is said, may make a proclamation quoad terrorem populi, to put them in fear of his displeasure, but not to impose any fine, forefeiture, or imprisonment; for no proclamation can make a new law, but only confirm and ratify an ancient one." Dalison's Reports, 20.
[549] Winwood, iii. 193.
[550] Carte, iii. 805.
[551] The number of these was intended to be two hundred, but only ninety-three patents were sold in the first six years. Lingard, ix. 203, from Somers Tracts. In the first part of his reign he had availed himself of an old feudal resource, calling on all who held £40 a year in chivalry (whether of the crown or not, as it seems) to receive knighthood, or to pay a composition. Rymer, xvi. 530. The object of this was of course to raise money from those who thought the honour troublesome and expensive, but such as chose to appear could not be refused; and this accounts for his having made many hundred knights in the first year of his reign. Harris's Life of James, 69.
[552] MS. penes autorem.
[553] Carte, iv. 17.