the tender point of prerogative, but, in restoring the subjects' liberty, were careful to preserve the king's honour."[1] James, it should appear, on this occasion professed to have been entirely ignorant, until informed by his faithful Commons, of the abuses alleged to have taken place; and it was contrived that the whole blame as well as punishment should fall upon the patentees, on the pretence that they had exceeded their privileges, and on certain of the officers of state concerned in the granting of the patents, on the somewhat contradictory pretence that they had not been sufficiently careful in limiting the terms of these grants so as to guard them against being abused. "I do assiure you," said his majesty, in a speech which he came down and made to the Lords while the inquiry was going on, "I do assure you, in the heart of an honest man, and by the faith of a Christian king, which both ye and all the world know me to be, had these things been complained of to me before the parliament I would have done the office of a just king, and out of parliament have punished them as severely, and peradventure more, than ye now intend to do. But now that they are discovered to me in parliament, I shall be as ready in this way as I should have been in the other; for I confess I am ashamed, these things proving so as they are generally reported to be, that it was not my good fortune to be the only author of the reformation and punishment of them by some ordinary course of justice." "Three patents at this time," he went on to say," have been complained of and thought great grievances: 1. That of the inns and hostelries, 2. That of alehouses. 3. That of gold and silver thread. My purpose is to strike them all dead; and, that time may not be lost, I will have it done presently. That concerning alehouses I would have to be left to the managing of justices of the peace as before. That of gold and silver thread was most vilely executed, both for wrong done to men's persons, as also for abuse of the stuff, for it was a kind of false coin. I have already freed the persons that were
- ↑ Collection, i. 24
