oclamation, for
which the Commons returned him thanks with great exultation over
their victory.

For Cowell had taken too strongly the high monarchical line, and
the episode of his book is really the first engagement in that
great war between Prerogative and People which raged through the
seventeenth century. "I hold it uncontrollable," he wrote, "that
the King of England is an absolute king." "Though it be a
merciful policy, and also a politic policy (not alterable without
great peril) to make laws by the consent of the whole realm . . .
yet simply to bind the prince to or by these laws were repugnant
to the nature and custom of an absolute monarchy." "For those
regalities which are of the higher nature there is not one that
belonged to the most absolute prince in the world which doth not
also belong to our King." But the book was condemned, not only
for its sins against the Subject, but also for passages that were
said to pinch on the authority of the King. Yet, considered
merely as a Law Dictionary, it is still one of the best in our
language.

In the King's proclamation against the _Interpreter_ are some
passages that curiously illustrate the mind of its author. He
thus complains of the growing freedom of thought: "From the very
highest mysteries of the Godhead and the most inscrutable
counsels in the Trinitie to the very lowest pit of Hell and the
confused action of the divells there, there is nothing now
unsearched into by the curiositie of men's brains"; so that "it
is no wonder that they do not spare to wade in all the deepest
mysteries that belong to the persons or the state of Kinges and
Princes, that are gods upon earth." King James's attitude to Free
Thought reminds one of the legendary contention between Canute
and the sea. No one has ever repeated the latter experiment, but
how many thousands still disquiet themselves, as James did, about
or against the progress of the human mind!

In the proclamation itself there is no actual mention of burning,
all persons in possession of the book being required to deliver
their copies to the Lord Mayor or County Sheriffs "for the
further order of its utter suppression" (March 25th, 1610);
neither is there any allusion to burning in the Parliamentary
journals, nor in the letters relating to the subject in Winwood's
_Memorials_. The contemporary evidence of the fact is, however,
supplied by Sir H. Spelman, who says in his _Glossarium_ (under
the word "Tenure") tha