2. The political side of this paternal government.
2 a. Possible attempt to secure the adhesion of poorer classes to government.
It may be that there is a political side to the policy of Charles's Council in this matter. Dr Gardiner suggests that the adoption of this policy of paternal government may be attributed to the influence of Wentworth. "It can hardly be by accident that his accession to the Privy Council was followed by a series of measures aiming at the benefit of the people in general, and at the protection of the helpless against the pressure caused by the self interest of particular classes[712]."
There were also other members of the Council who were likely to be interested in enforcing orders for the benefit of the poorer classes. Sir Julius Caesar, the Master of the Rolls, was at that time in office. He certainly was very charitable if not very wise in his charity. He is described by Fuller as "a person of prodigious bounty to all of worth or want so that he might seem to be Almoner-General of the Nation. The story is well known of a Gentleman who once borrowing his Coach (which was as well known to poor people as any Hospital in England) was so rendevouzed about with Beggers in London that it cost him all the money in his purse to satisfie their importunity; so that he might have hired twenty coaches on the same terms[713]." It is also probable that Laud may have had something to do with the strict enforcement of the apprentice part of the law in 1633-4, for we have seen he was much interested in apprenticeship, and founded many charities for the purpose himself.
Dr Gardiner also thinks that this policy "may serve as an indication that there were some at least in the Council who in their quarrel with the aristocracy were anxious to fall back upon an alliance with the people[714]." It is very possibly not entirely accidental that the name of John Caesar is attached to a report from Edwinstree in 1639 in which the inhabitants are "well disposed in relegion, obedient to gou(ern)mt and forward in pious and charitable accons[715]," while the district of John Hampden sent up at least one protest as to the measures of scarcity[716].
2 b. The use of proclamations and orders in Council for a popular purpose.
There is however possibly another political side to these orders. The measures which were designed to protect the poor from the undue rapacity of traders or from the carelessness of parochial officials were nearly all enforced by proclamations and orders in Council. Generally these orders were in accordance with the letter of the law and almost always with the spirit which had dictated the legislation; but still the fact that proclamations and orders in Council were used to enforce this popular side of government may have been designed to increase the popularity of government by this means; it certainly tended to habituate the justices to their use and to make the majority of the nation cease to regard them as instruments of tyranny.
This danger was not unforeseen at the time. A knowledge of it probably influenced the reply of the Scotch justices when they doubted if "ane simple proclamatioun be ane sufficient warrand" for levying a tax[717], but there is also a remarkable protest by John Hawarde in 1597 when he is recording the enforcement of the measures undertaken to help the poor at that time. He says that engrossers, and forestallers of corn in London were proceeded against "by the Queen's prerogative only and by proclamation, councils, orders and letters, and thus their decrees, councils, proclamations, and orders shall be a firm and forcible law and of the like force as the Common law or an Act of Parliament." The Puritan lawyer jealously notes that the builders of illegal cottages and negligent justices also were to be punished "on the proclamation and not on the statute[718]." "And this is the intent," he says, "of the Privy Councillors in our day and time to attribute to their councils and orders the vigour, force and power of a firm law and of higher virtue and force, jurisdiction and preheminence' than any positive law, whether it be the common law or statute law. And thus in a short time the Privy Councillors of this realm would be the most honourable, noble and commanding lords in all the world and [have] the majesty of prince and ruler of the greatest reverence in all the world[719]."
It is quite possible that this side of government was enforced by the orders in Council simply as a matter of convenience; it might have been difficult to pass new legislation contrary to the interests of the middle classes through a body in which the representation of those classes was so great as it was in the Tudor and Stuart House of Commons.
But if the danger of allowing the royal prerogative to be used apart from statute law was seen and protested against under the popular Queen Elizabeth, it would certainly also excite opposition in the reign of Charles I.