ree speech, freedom from
arrest, and access to the sovereign were arbitrarily suspended or
otherwise flagrantly violated.

*22. The Independence of the Crown.*--Finally must be mentioned certain
devices by which the crown was enabled to evade limitations
theoretically imposed by Parliament's recognized authority. One of
these was the issuing of proclamations. In the sixteenth century it
was generally maintained that the sovereign, acting alone or with the
advice of the Council, could issue proclamations controlling the
liberty of the subject, so long as such edicts did not violate statute
or common law. As a corollary, it was maintained also that the crown
could dispense with the action of law in individual cases and at (p. 022)
times of crisis. The range covered by these prerogatives was broad and
undefined, and in the hands of an aggressive monarch they constituted
a serious invasion of the powers of legislation nominally vested in
Parliament. It is true that the act of 1539 imparting to royal
proclamations the force of law was repealed in 1547; but proclamations
continued, especially under Elizabeth and James I., not only to be
numerous, but to be enforced relentlessly by penalties inflicted
through the Star Chamber. The most important power of Parliament in
the sixteenth century was still that of voting supplies. But in
respect to finance, as in respect to legislation, the crown possessed
effective means of evading parliamentary control. In the first place,
the sovereign possessed large revenues, arising from crown lands,
feudal rights, profits of jurisdiction, and ecclesiastical payments,
with which Parliament had nothing whatever to do. In the second place,
the great indirect taxes--customs duties and tonnage and
poundage--were, in the sixteenth century, voted at the accession of a
sovereign for the whole of the reign. It was only in respect to
extraordinary taxes--"subsidies" and "tenths and fifteenths"--that
Parliament was in a position effectually to make or mar the fiscal
fortunes of the Government; except that, of course, it was always open
to Parliament to criticise the financial expedients of the crown, such
as the sale of monopolies, the levy of "impositions," and the
collection of benevolences, and to influence, if it could, the policy
pursued in relation to these matters.

*23. The House of Lords in 1485.*--Despite the numerous strictures that
have been mentioned, Parliament in the Tudor period by no