d
an order to the custom-house, prohibiting the sale of all crimson silks
which should be imported, till the court were first supplied.[*] She
expected, no doubt, a good pennyworth from the merchants while they lay
under this restraint.

The parliament pretended to the right of enacting laws, as well as of
granting subsidies; but this privilege was, during that age, still more
insignificant than the other. Queen Elizabeth expressly prohibited them
from meddling either with state matters or ecclesiastical causes;
and she openly sent the members to prison who dared to transgress
her imperial edict in these particulars. There passed few sessions of
parliament, during her reign where there occur not instances of this
arbitrary conduct.

But the legislative power of the parliament was a mere fallacy, while
the sovereign was universally acknowledged to possess a dispensing
power, by which all the laws could be invalidated, and rendered of no
effect. The exercise of this power was also an indirect method
practised for erecting monopolies. Where the statutes laid any branch of
manufacture under restrictions, the sovereign, by exempting one person
from the laws, gave him in effect the monopoly of that commodity.[**]
There was no grievance at that time more universally complained of, than
the frequent dispensing with the penal laws.[***]

But in reality the crown possessed the full legislative power, by means
of proclamations, which might affect any matter, even of the greatest
importance, and which the star chamber took care to see more rigorously
executed than the laws themselves. The motives for these proclamations
were sometimes frivolous, and even ridiculous. Queen Elizabeth had taken
offence at the smell of woad; and she issued an edict prohibiting any
one from cultivating that useful plant.[****]

* Strype, vol. i. p. 27.

** Rymer, tom. xv. p. 756. D'Ewes, p. 645.

*** Murden, p. 325.

**** Townsend's Journals, p. 250. Stow's Annals.

She was also pleased to take offence at the long swords and high ruffs
then in fashion: she sent about her officers to break every man's sword,
and clip every man's ruff which was beyond a certain dimension.[*] This
practice resembles the method employed by the great Czar Peter to make
his subjects change their garb.

The queen's prohibition of the "prophesyings," or the assemblies
instituted for fanatical prayers and conferences, was founded on a
better reaso