Note 258 — Chapter VII

Canon Dixon (History of the Church of England, vol. ii. p. 129) sees in the Act about Proclamations ‘a timid attempt to draw the prerogative within the limits of regular legislation,’ and seeks to show that its true intent was to curtail, while legalizing, a power which the Crown had exercised hitherto illegally and without any restraint. It is doubtless true that the King had issued proclamations before, and had enforced obedience to them, without the sanction of law; and it is equally certain that the intent of this Act (like that of so many others which Cromwell devised) was to legalize a privilege of which the Crown had already made use. But it is more difficult to agree with the reasoning by which Canon Dixon attempts to show that the true purpose of this process of legalization was to restrict and not to confirm the power of the King. It is pretty certain that the practical value of these limitations was in reality far less than at first appeared; for, as Hallam and Burnet justly remark, the immediate effect of them was to confer great power on the judges, upon whom the duty of interpreting the statute devolved; and the judges—mere puppets in the hands of Henry and Cromwell—were sure to render every verdict in favour of the Crown. The exceptions in the Act about Proclamations may well be compared to the Quantum per Christi legem licet, which had been tacked on to the recognition of the King’s Supremacy. Both were concessions granted merely as a sop to the popular feeling: both were so guarded that they could easily be rendered nugatory. Finally, the fact that Cromwell himself was so active in assisting the passage of this statute should be a conclusive proof that its real aim was not to legalize and limit, but to legalize and confirm the power of the Crown. The straightforward verdicts of Hume and Hallam on the true significance of the Act are certainly correct: ‘The prerogative could not soar to the heights it aimed at, till thus imped by the perfidious hand of Parliament.’ The fact that the statute was repealed in the first year of Edward VI. simply proves that it was so unpopular that it was impossible to renew it, when the strong hand of Henry VIII. had been removed. Cf. Hume, vol. iii. pp. 255, 256; Hallam, vol. i. p. 35; and Blackstone, vol. i. p. 269. There is a curious passage in Beowulf (ll. 67–73), in which the King rules as he wills, saving his subjects’ lives and heritages, that is in striking congruence with this Act.