us, holding their affectionate desire to see our
person to be a certaine testimonie of their inward love;" but he
says he must not "give way to so great a mischiefe as the continuall
resort may breed," and that therefore all that have no special cause
of attendance must at once go back until the time of his coronation,
when they may "returne until the solemnity be passed;" but only for
that time, for if the proclamation be slighted he shall "make them
an example of contempt if we shall finde any making stay here
contrary to this direction." Such proclamations were from time to
time issued, and though sometimes evaded, were frequently enforced
by fines, so that living in London was a risk and danger to country
gentlemen of fortune.

[240] Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 288.

[241] From a manuscript letter from Sir George Gresley to Sir Thomas
Puckering, Nov. 1632.

[242] Harl. MSS. 6. fo. 152.

ROYAL PROCLAMATIONS.

The satires and the comedies of the age have been consulted by the
historian of our manners, and the features of the times have been traced
from those amusing records of folly. Daines Barrinton enlarged this
field of domestic history in his very entertaining "Observations on the
Statutes." Another source, which to me seems not to have been explored,
is the proclamations which have frequently issued from our sovereigns,
and were produced by the exigencies of the times.

These proclamations or royal edicts in our country were never armed with
the force of laws--only as they enforce the execution of laws already
established; and the proclamation of a British monarch may become even
an illegal act, if it be in opposition to the law of the land. Once,
indeed, it was enacted under the arbitrary government of Henry the
Eighth, by the sanction of a pusillanimous parliament, that the force of
acts of parliament should be given to the king's proclamations; and at a
much later period the chancellor, Lord Ellesmere, was willing to have
advanced the king's proclamations into laws, on the sophistical maxim
that "all precedents had a time when they began;" but this chancellor
argued ill, as he was told with spirit by Lord Coke, in the presence of
James the First,[243] who probably did not think so ill of the
chancellor's logic. Blackstone, to whom on this occasion I could not
fail to turn, observes, on the statute under Henry the Eighth, that it
would have introd