e State
Trials, and Sir Robert Atkins's Inquiry concerning the
Dispensing Power.

The claim and exercise of the dispensing power is allowed to be very
ancient in England; and though it seems at first to have been copied
from Papal usurpations, it may plainly be traced up as high as the reign
of Henry III. In the feudal governments, men were more anxious to secure
their private property than to share in the public administration; and
provided no innovations were attempted on their rights and possessions,
the care of executing the laws, and insuring general safety, was,
without jealousy, intrusted to the sovereign. Penal statutes were
commonly intended to arm the prince with more authority for that
purpose: and being in the main calculated for promoting his influence
as first magistrate, there seemed no danger in allowing him to dispense
with their execution, in such particular cases as might require an
exception or indulgence. That practice had so much prevailed, that the
parliament itself had more than once acknowledged this prerogative of
the crown; particularly during the reign of Henry V., when they enacted
the law against aliens,[*] and also when they passed the statute of
provisors.[**]

* Rot. Parl. I Hen. V. n. xv.

** Ibid. I Hen. V. n. xxii. It is remarkable, however, that
in the reign of Richard II. the parliament granted the king
only a temporary power of dispensing with the statute of
provisors. Rot. Parl. 15 Rich.[** 15 is a best guess] II. n.
i.: a plain implication that he had not, of himself, such
prerogative. So uncertain were many of these points at that
time.

But though the general tenor of the penal statutes was such as gave the
king a superior interest in their execution, beyond any of his subjects,
it could not but sometimes happen in a mixed government, that the
parliament would desire to enact laws by which the regal power, in some
particulars, even where private property was not immediately concerned,
might be regulated and restrained. In the twenty-third of Henry VI.,
a law of this kind was enacted, prohibiting any man from serving in a
county as sheriff above a year; and a clause was inserted, by which the
king was disabled from granting a dispensation. Plain reason might have
taught, that this law, at least, should be exempted from the king's
prerogative: but as the dispensing power still prevailed in other cases,
it was soon able, aide