[252] ‘Obraua Cromuel, estas, y otras atrocidades libremente, dando á entender ser conueniencia del Principe, para la estabilidad de su Corona, sujecion, y terror en los vassallos.’ Mendez Silva, p. 13.
[253] Letters, 197.
[254] Henry de Bracton’s De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae.
[255] Cal. xiii. (i) 120.
[257] The following passage from a letter which Gardiner wrote to the Protector Somerset in the reign of Edward VI. gives a slightly different account of the origin of the Act about Proclamations:—
‘Whether the King may command against the Common Law or an Act of Parliament there is never a Judge, or other man in the realm, ought to know more by experience of that the Lawyers have said, than I . . . being of the Council, when many Proclamations were devised against the Carriers out of Corn; when it came to punishing the Offenders the Judges would answer, it might not be by the Laws, because the Act of Parliament gave liberty, Wheat being under a price: wherupon at the last followed the Act of Proclamations, in the passing whereof were many large words.’
It will be noticed that this account of the origin of the Act is in many ways similar to that contained in Cromwell’s letter: the chief difference being that according to the latter the measure was adopted to prevent the export of coin, while Gardiner informs us that the statute was devised to prevent the export of corn. It is possible that the Bishop of Winchester, writing so many years later, had forgotten the exact circumstances, and was really referring to the same incident as that described by Cromwell. Burnet has printed Gardiner’s letter in full (Collection of Records and Original Papers, &c., part ii, book i, no. 14), but he does not seem to have made use of the information it contains; for in another part of his work (part i, book iii, p. 423) he asserts that the Act about Proclamations was the result of the great exceptions made to the legality of the King’s proceedings in the articles about religion and other injunctions published by his authority, which were complained of as contrary to law. Hallam (vol. i. p. 35 n.) apparently agrees with Burnet in this last statement, and ignores the evidence supplied by the letter of the Bishop of Winchester. It is probable that both writers have gone astray in this matter. The opposition aroused by the King’s ecclesiastical proclamations may have hastened the passage of the Act, but they can scarcely be regarded as its origin in the face of the testimony of Cromwell and Gardiner. Burnet and Hallam were perhaps led to ascribe the source of the statute to religious matters, by the fact that the Act was passed almost simultaneously with the Six Articles, and by the special provision which it contained concerning heretics.
[258] Canon Dixon (History of the Church of England, vol. ii. p. 129) sees in the Act about Proclamations ‘a timid attempt to draw the prerogative within the limits of regular legislation,’ and seeks to show that its true intent was to curtail, while legalizing, a power which the Crown had exercised hitherto illegally and without any restraint. It is doubtless true that the King had issued proclamations before, and had enforced obedience to them, without the sanction of law; and it is equally certain that the intent of this Act (like that of so many others which Cromwell devised) was to legalize a privilege of which the Crown had already made use. But it is more difficult to agree with the reasoning by which Canon Dixon attempts to show that the true purpose of this process of legalization was to restrict and not to confirm the power of the King. It is pretty certain that the practical value of these limitations was in reality far less than at first appeared; for, as Hallam and Burnet justly remark, the immediate effect of them was to confer great power on the judges, upon whom the duty of interpreting the statute devolved; and the judges—mere puppets in the hands of Henry and Cromwell—were sure to render every verdict in favour of the Crown. The exceptions in the Act about Proclamations may well be compared to the Quantum per Christi legem licet, which had been tacked on to the recognition of the King’s Supremacy. Both were concessions granted merely as a sop to the popular feeling: both were so guarded that they could easily be rendered nugatory. Finally, the fact that Cromwell himself was so active in assisting the passage of this statute should be a conclusive proof that its real aim was not to legalize and limit, but to legalize and confirm the power of the Crown. The straightforward verdicts of Hume and Hallam on the true significance of the Act are certainly correct: ‘The prerogative could not soar to the heights it aimed at, till thus imped by the perfidious hand of Parliament.’ The fact that the statute was repealed in the first year of Edward VI. simply proves that it was so unpopular that it was impossible to renew it, when the strong hand of Henry VIII. had been removed. Cf. Hume, vol. iii. pp. 255, 256; Hallam, vol. i. p. 35; and Blackstone, vol. i. p. 269. There is a curious passage in Beowulf (ll. 67–73), in which the King rules as he wills, saving his subjects’ lives and heritages, that is in striking congruence with this Act.
[259] Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 439.