Legislative.—Many of the so-called statutes of the middle ages have no better authority than the Crown in council. By the end of the 15th century, however, statutes are quite distinct from ordinances or proclamations (as they were coming to be called). Conciliar legislation was vaguely considered to be subordinate to statute and common law, and less permanent also, its duration being apparently limited to the life of the enacting sovereign. Nevertheless, the legislative powers of the Crown in council were still wide and undefined. The Statute of Proclamations (1539) did something temporarily to regulate them on a firm basis and with a limited range, but was repealed at the accession of Edward VI., and as, later on, parliaments became less docile, there was a natural tendency on the part of the sovereign to claim greater authority and a wider scope for proclamations. "When the common state or wealth of the people require it," it was said in the Star Chamber, "the king's proclamation binds as a new law and need not stay a parliament." Finally, the am bitious pretensions of the first Stuart king brought the matter to a head. In 1610 the Commons complained that the number and range of recent proclamations made them fear "that proclama tions will, by degrees, grow up and increase to the strength and nature of laws." And Coke, consulted as to the answer to be given, laid down in the Case of Proclamations an authoritative limitation. "The king cannot," he said, "change any part of the common law nor create any offence by his proclamation which was not an offence before, without parliament. . . . But a thing which is punishable by the law, by fine and imprisonment, if the king prohibit it by his proclamation . . . and so warn his sub jects of the peril of it . . . this as a circumstance aggravates the offence." It was too much to expect either James I. or Charles I. to observe these principles, but the later Stuarts kept to the limits laid down, mainly, perhaps, because there was no longer a Star Chamber to enforce the ultra-legal acts of a sovereign.
But there is another aspect of the legislative functions of the council. It was completely, once, and is still, in part, a component of the legislature. Parliament was originally only the fullest assembly of the curia regis, a re-fusion, as it has been called, of all the elements into which the old, undifferentiated curia was coming to be resolved. As the king was the core of the council. so the council was the core of the narliament. Those members of the council who were lords, spiritual or lay, sat among their peers on the benches along the side walls, to right and left of the king respectively ; the commoners sat on four woolsacks in the midst of the chamber. Their exact positions were regulated later by the Act for Placing the Lords (1539). But already, in the 14th century, as the parliament chamber began to develop into the House of Lords, peers and bishops began to regard the com moners present as inferior persons, with inferior, if any, rights.
As the commoners lost influence, so they lost interest, and in Wolsey's time began to seek election to the House of Commons; and this practice had become the rule for privy councillors, who were not bishops and peers, by the middle of the 16th century. The lord chancellor remained in the House of Lords because he was its presiding officer (only since Anne's reign has he been invariably made a peer), and thus retained his woolsack, but the other councillors—by non-attendance—have forfeited their seats, and even now a privy councillor, not being a peer or bishop, who wishes to attend the House of Lords, must content himself with standing on the steps of the throne. The so-called privilege of the Lords to require the attendance of the judges (who still sit on the woolsacks at the opening of parliament) is no more than a survival of the judges' regular attendance in the parlia ment chamber as members of the curia and counsellors of the Crown.
For the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council see below.