Note 1 — SIR JOHN ELIOT.

Note 1, p. 8.—Ever since the Norman Conquest the royal assent to measures of Parliament has been given in a form from which there has been no variation. To “public bills” the words attached are “le roy le veult”; to petitions, “soit droit fait comme il est désiré”; and for grants of money, “the King heartily thanks his subjects for their good wills.” In the present instance, instead of soit droit fait comme il est désiré, the King caused to be appended to the petition, “The King willeth that right be done according to the laws and customs of the realm; that the statutes be put into due execution; and that his subjects may have no cause to complain of any wrong or oppressions contrary to their just rights and liberties, to the preservation whereof he holds himself in conscience as well obliged, as of his own prerogative.”—Rushworth, i., 588. On the forms of royal assent see the learned account by Selden in “Parliamentary History,” viii., 237.