I. The Pricing of Meat: A Study in the Use of Royal Proclamations in the Reign of Henry VIII

Abstract

The major argument of those who view the Statute of Proclamations as a tyrannical measure seems to be that the government planned to use it to replace Parliamentary legislation with legislation by decree. Unfortunately this supposition has not been tested by a study of the actual use of proclamations in the reign of Henry VIII. The continuation of a three-centuries-old controversy over the meaning and intent of this enigmatic statute indicates that further efforts to unravel the mystery by concentrating on the wording of the statute and the circumstances surrounding its passage would prove unrewarding unless new evidence were to be uncovered. This dilemma suggests that a new approach is necessary. If the Statute of Proclamations is to be understood in its proper context, the total role of proclamations in Tudor legislation and administration must be investigated, and their relationship to other types of legislation during the entire Tudor period must be studied.