nge and tiplinge in
Innes and Alehouses," and, indeed, much of his legislation is aimed at
what should properly be called "sins" rather than "crimes"; the next
act after this was one to restrain "all persons from Marriage until
their former Wyves and former Husbandes be deade." And next came a
statute against witchcraft. In 1603 is an act to prohibit people from
eating anything but fish in Lent, entitled "An Acte to encourage
the Seamen of England to take Fishe, wherebie they may encrease to
furnishe the Navie of England." There was an act for the relief of
skinners, and a charter given by Queen Elizabeth in the twenty-first
year of her reign to the Eastland merchants for a monopoly of trade in
those countries; it would be interesting could these early corporation
charters and monopoly grants be printed, for they are not usually
found in the statutes of the realm. In 1605 stage players are
forbidden from swearing on the stage. In 1606 is an elaborate act for
the regulation of the spinning, weaving, dyeing, and width of woollen
cloth, and the same year is an act for "repressinge the odious and
loathsome synne of Drunckennes," imposing a penalty or fine and the
stocks. In 1609 an act of Edward IV is revived, forbidding the sale of
English horns unwrought, that people of strange lands do come in and
carry the same over the sea and there work them, one of the latest
statutes against the export of raw material. In the last year of his
reign comes the great Statute of Monopolies noted in the last chapter,
and an act extending the benefit of clergy to women convicted of small
felonies, for which they had previously suffered death, and another
act for the repression of drunkenness. And the last statute we shall
note, like the first, is concerned with regrating and engrossing;
that is to say, it re-enacts the Statute of Edward VI prohibiting
the engrossing of butter and cheese, and prohibiting middlemen. Thus
restraint of trade and freedom of labor begin and end as the most
usual subjects of English popular law-making.

* * * * *

A few words upon Cromwell's legislation may be of interest; for though
it was all repealed and left no vestige in the laws of England, it had
some effect upon the legislation of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and
Connecticut. Under the Commonwealth there was but one legislative
chamber, and over that the protector exercised far more control than
had been ventured by the m