The proclamations of James the First, by their number, are said to have sunk their value with the people.[248] He was fond of giving them gentle advice; and it is said by Wilson that there was an intention to have this king’s printed proclamations bound up in a volume, that better notice might be taken of the matters contained in them. There is more than one to warn the people against “speaking too freely of matters above their reach,” prohibiting all “undutiful speeches.” I suspect that many of these proclamations are the composition of the king’s own hand; he was often his own secretary. There is an admirable one against private duels and challenges. The curious one respecting Cowell’s “Interpreter” is a sort of royal review of some of the arcana of state: I refer to the quotation.[249]
I will preserve a passage of a proclamation “against excess of lavish and licentious speech.” James was a king of words!
“Although the commixture of nations, confluence of ambassadors, and the relation which the affairs of our kingdoms have had towards the business and interests of foreign states have caused, during our regiment (government) a greater openness and liberty of discourse, even concerning matters of state (which are no themes or subjects fit for vulgar persons or common meetings), than hath been in former times used or permitted; and although in our own nature and judgment we do well allow of convenient freedom of speech, esteeming any over-curious or restrained hands carried in that kind rather as a weakness, or else over-much severity of government than otherwise; yet for as much as it is come to our ears, by common report, that there is at this time a more licentious passage of lavish discourse and bold censure in matters of state than is fit to be suffered: We give this warning, &c., to take heed how they intermeddle by pen or speech with causes of state and secrets of empire, either at home or abroad, but contain themselves within that modest and reverent regard of matters above their reach and calling; nor to give any manner of applause to such discourse, without acquainting one of our privy council within the space of twenty-four hours.”
It seems that “the bold speakers,” as certain persons were then denominated, practised an old artifice of lauding his majesty, while they severely arraigned the counsels of the cabinet; on this James observes, “Neither let any man mistake us so much as to think that by giving fair and specious attributes to our person, they cover the scandals which they otherwise lay upon our government, but conceive that we make no other construction of them but as fine and artificial glosses, the better to give passage to the rest of their imputations and scandals.”
This was a proclamation in the eighteenth year of his reign; he repeated it in the nineteenth, and he might have proceeded to “the crack of doom” with the same effect!
Rushworth, in his second volume of Historical Collections, has preserved a considerable number of the proclamations of Charles the First, of which many are remarkable; but latterly they mark the feverish state of his reign. One regulates access for cure of the king’s evil—by which his majesty, it appears, “hath had good success therein;” but though ready and willing as any king or queen of this realm ever was to relieve the distresses of his good subjects, “his majesty commands to change the seasons for his ‘sacred touch’ from Easter and Whitsuntide to Easter and Michaelmas, as times more convenient for the temperature of the season,” &c. Another against “departure out of the realm without license.” One to erect an office “for the suppression of cursing and swearing,” to receive the forfeitures; against “libellous and seditious pamphlets and discourses from Scotland,” framed by factious spirits, and republished in London—this was in 1640; and Charles, at the crisis of that great insurrection in which he was to be at once the actor and the spectator, fondly imagined that the possessors of these “scandalous” pamphlets would bring them, as he proclaimed “to one of his majesty’s justices of peace, to be by him sent to one of his principal secretaries of state!”
On the Restoration, Charles the Second had to court his people by his domestic regulations. He early issued a remarkable proclamation, which one would think reflected on his favourite companions, and which strongly marks the moral disorders of those depraved and wretched times. It is against “vicious, debauched, and profane persons!” who are thus described:—
“A sort of men of whom we have heard much, and are sufficiently ashamed; who spend their time in taverns, tippling-houses and debauches; giving no other evidence of their affection to us but in drinking our health, and inveighing against all others who are not of their own dissolute temper; and who, in truth, have more discredited our cause, by the license of their manners and lives, than they could ever advance it by their affection or courage. We hope all persons of honour, or in place and authority, will so far assist us in discountenancing such men, that their discretion and shame will persuade them to reform what their conscience would not; and that the displeasure of good men towards them may supply what the laws have not, and, it may be, cannot well provide against; there being by the license and corruption of the times, and the depraved nature of man, many enormities, scandals, and impieties in practice and manners, which laws cannot well describe, and consequently not enough provide against, which may, by the example and severity of virtuous men, be easily discountenanced, and by degrees suppressed.”
Surely the gravity and moral severity of Clarendon dictated this proclamation! which must have afforded some mirth to the gay, debauched circle, the loose cronies of royalty!
It is curious that, in 1660, Charles the Second issued a long proclamation for the strict observance of Lent, and alleges for it the same reason as we found in Edward the Sixth’s proclamation, “for the good it produces in the employment of fishermen” No ordinaries, taverns, &c., to make any supper on Friday nights, either in Lent or out of Lent.