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Embargoes on merchandise was another engine of royal power, by which the English princes were able to extort money from the people. We have seen instances in the reign of Mary. Elizabeth, before her coronation, issued 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 reason, 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 punished for executing the writs in favor of these persons. Nay, it was usual to send for people by pursuivants, a kind of harpies who then attended the orders of the council and high commission; and they were brought up to London, and constrained by imprisonment, not only to withdraw their lawful suits, but also to pay the pursuivants great sums of money. The judges, in the thirty-fourth of the queen, complain to her majesty of the frequency of this practice. It is probable that so egregious a tyranny was carried no farther down than the reign of Elizabeth; since the parliament who presented the petition of right found no later instances of it.[*] And even these very judges of Elizabeth, who thus protect the people against the tyranny of the great, expressly allow, that a person committed by special command of the queen is not bailable.

It is easy to imagine that, in such a government, no justice could by course of law be obtained of the sovereign, unless he were willing to allow it. In the naval expedition undertaken by Raleigh and Frobisher against the Spaniards, in the year 1592, a very rich carrack was taken, worth two hundred thousand pounds. The queen’s share in the adventure was only a tenth; but as the prize was so great, and exceeded so much the expectation of all the adventurers, she was determined not to rest contented with her share. Raleigh humbly and earnestly begged her to accept of a hundred thousand pounds in lieu of all demands, or rather extortions; and says that the present which the proprietors were willing to make her of eighty thousand pounds, was the greatest that ever prince received from a subject.[**]

* Rushworth, vol. i. p. 511. Franklyn’s Annals, p. 250, 251.

** Strype, vol. iv. p. 128, 129.

But it is no wonder the queen, in her administration, should pay so little regard to liberty, while the parliament itself, in enacting laws, was entirely negligent of it. The persecuting statutes which they passed against Papists and Puritans are extremely contrary to the genius of freedom; and by exposing such multitudes to the tyranny of priests and bigots, accustomed the people to the most disgraceful subjection. Their conferring an unlimited supremacy on the queen, or, what is worse, acknowledging her inherent right to it, was another proof of their voluntary servitude.

The law of the twenty-third of her reign, making seditious words against the queen capital, is also a very tyrannical statute; and a use no less tyrannical was sometimes made of it. The case of Udal, a Puritanical clergyman, seems singular even in those arbitrary times. This man had published a book, called a Demonstration of Discipline, in which he inveighed against the government of bishops; and though he had carefully endeavored to conceal his name, he was thrown into prison upon suspicion, and brought to a trial for this offence. It was pretended, that the bishops were part of the queen’s political body; and to speak against them, was really to attack her, and was therefore felony by the statute. This was not the only iniquity to which Udal was exposed. The judges would not allow the jury to determine any thing but the fact, whether Udal had written the book or not, without examining his intention, or the import of the words. In order to prove the fact, the crown lawyers did not produce a single witness to the court: they only read the testimony of two persons absent, one of whom said, that Udal had told him he was the author; another, that a friend of Udal’s had said so. They would not allow Udal to produce any exculpatory evidence; which, they said, was never to be permitted against the crown.[*] And they tendered him an oath, by which he was required to depose that he was not the author of the book; and his refusal to make that deposition was employed as the strongest proof of his guilt. It is almost needless to add, that notwithstanding these multiplied iniquities, a verdict of death was given by the jury against Udal; for, as the queen was extremely bent upon his prosecution, it was impossible he could escape.[**] He died in prison, before execution of the sentence.