Note 548 — Chapter VI

12 Reports. There were, however, several proclamations afterwards to forbid building within two miles of London, except on old foundations, and in that case only with brick or stone, under penalty of being proceeded against by the attorney-general in the star-chamber. Rymer, xvii. 107 (1618), 144 (1619), 607 (1624). London nevertheless increased rapidly, which was by means of licences to build; the prohibition being in this, as in many other cases enacted chiefly for the sake of the dispensations.

James made use of proclamations to infringe personal liberty in another respect. He disliked to see any country-gentleman come up to London, where, it must be confessed, if we trust to what those proclamations assert and the memoirs of the age confirm, neither their own behaviour, nor that of their wives and daughters, who took the worst means of repairing the ruin their extravagance had caused, redounded to their honour. The king's comparison of them to ships in a river and in the sea is well known. Still, in a constitutional point of view, we may be startled at proclamations commanding them to return to their country-houses and maintain hospitality, on pain of condign punishment. Rymer, xvi. 517 (1604); xvii. 417 (1622), 632 (1624).

I neglected, in the first chapter, the reference I had made to an important dictum of the judges in the reign of Mary, which is decisive as to the legal character of proclamations even in the midst of the Tudor period. "The king, it is said, may make a proclamation quoad terrorem populi, to put them in fear of his displeasure, but not to impose any fine, forefeiture, or imprisonment; for no proclamation can make a new law, but only confirm and ratify an ancient one." Dalison's Reports, 20.