n, but shows still the unlimited extent of her prerogative.
Any number of persons could not meet together, in order to read the
Scriptures and confer about religion, though in ever so orthodox a
manner, without her permission.

There were many other branches of prerogative incompatible with an
exact or regular enjoyment of liberty. None of the nobility could marry
without permission from the sovereign. The queen detained the earl of
Southampton long in prison, because he privately married the earl of
Essex's cousin.[**] No man could travel without the consent of the
prince. Sir William Evers underwent a severe persecution because he had
presumed to pay a private visit to the king of Scots.[***] The sovereign
even assumed a supreme and uncontrolled authority over all foreign
trade; and neither allowed any person to enter or depart the kingdom,
nor any commodity to be imported or exported, without his consent.[****]

The parliament, in the thirteenth of the queen, praised her for not
imitating the practice usual among her predecessors, of stopping the
course of justice by particular warrants.[v] There could not possibly be
a greater abuse, nor a stronger mark of arbitrary power; and the queen,
in refraining from it, was very laudable. But she was by no means
constant in this reserve. There remain in the public records some
warrants of hers for exempting particular persons from all law-suits and
prosecutions;[v*] If and these warrants, she says, she grants from her
royal prerogative, which she will not allow to be disputed.

* Townsend's Journals, p. 250. Stow's Annals. Strype, vol. i
p 603.

** Birch's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 422.

*** Birch's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 511.

**** Sir John Davis's Question concerning Impositions,
passim

v D'Ewes, p. 141.

v* Rymer, tom, xv. p 652 708, 777.

It was very usual in Queen Elizabeth's reign, and probably in all the
preceding reigns, for noblemen or privy counsellors to commit to prison
any one who had happened to displease them by suing for his just debts;
and the unhappy person, though he gained his cause in the courts of
justice, was commonly obliged to relinquish his property in order to
obtain his liberty. Some, likewise, who had been delivered from prison
by the judges, were again committed to custody in secret places, without
any possibility of obtaining relief; and even the officers and serjeants
of the courts of law were p