ions of the nobility, by the disorders of the times, and by the
precarious state of feudal property, it appears that industry of no
kind could then have place in the kingdom [x].
[FN [x] We learn from the extracts given us of Doomsday by Brady, in
his Treatise of Boroughs, that almost all the boroughs of England had
suffered in the shock of the Conquest, and had extremely decayed
between the death of the Confessor, and the time when Doomsday was
framed.]

It is asserted by Sir Henry Spellman [y], as an undoubted truth, that,
during the reigns of the first Norman princes, every edict of the
king, issued with the consent of his privy council, had the full force
of law. But the barons, surely, were not so passive as to intrust a
power, entirely arbitrary and despotic, into the hands of the
sovereign. It only appears, that the constitution had not fixed any
precise boundaries to the royal power; that the right of issuing
proclamations on any emergence, and of exacting obedience to them, a
right which was always supposed inherent in the crown, is very
difficult to be distinguished from a legislative authority; that the
extreme imperfection of the ancient laws, and the sudden exigencies
which often occurred in such turbulent governments, obliged the prince
to exert frequently the latent powers of his prerogative; that he
naturally proceeded, from the acquiescence of the people, to assume,
in many particulars of moment, an authority from which he had excluded
himself by express statutes, charters, or concessions, and which was,
in the main, repugnant to the general genius of the constitution; and
that the lives, the personal liberty, and the properties of all his
subjects, were less secured by law against the exertion of his
arbitrary authority, than by the independent power and private
connexions of each individual. It appears from the great charter
itself, that not only John, a tyrannical prince, and Richard, a
violent one, but their father, Henry, under whose reign the prevalence
of gross abuses is the least to be suspected, were accustomed, from
their sole authority, without process of law, to imprison, banish, and
attaint the freemen of their kingdom.
[FN [y] Gloss. in verb. JUDICIUM DEI. The author of the MIROIR DES
JUSTICES complains, that ordinances are only made by the king and his
clerks, and by aliens and others, who dare not contradict the king,
but study to please him. Whence, he concludes, laws are oftener