_Act giving proclamations the force of law._--Henry's two divorces had created an uncertainty as to the line of succession, which parliament endeavoured to remove, not by such constitutional provisions in concurrence with the Crown as might define the course of inheritance, but by enabling the king, on failure of issue by Jane Seymour or any other lawful wife, to make over and bequeath the kingdom to any persons at his pleasure, not even reserving a preference to the descendants of former sovereigns.[42] By a subsequent statute, the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth were nominated in the entail, after the king's male issue, subject, however, to such conditions as he should declare, by non-compliance with which their right was to cease.[43] This act still left it in his power to limit the remainder at his discretion. In execution of this authority, he devised the crown, upon failure of issue from his three children, to the heirs of the body of Mary Duchess of Suffolk, the younger of his two sisters; postponing at least, if not excluding, the royal family of Scotland, descended from his elder sister Margaret. In surrendering the regular laws of the monarchy to one man's caprice, this parliament became accessary, so far as in it lay, to dispositions which might eventually have kindled the flames of civil war. But it seemed to aim at inflicting a still deeper injury on future generations, in enacting that a king, after he should have attained the age of twenty-four years, might repeal any statutes made since his accession.[44] Such a provision not only tended to annihilate the authority of a regency, and to expose the kingdom to a sort of anarchical confusion during its continuance, but seemed to prepare the way for a more absolute power of abrogating all acts of the legislature. Three years afterwards it was enacted that proclamations made by the king and council, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, should have the force of statutes, so that they should not be prejudicial to any person's inheritance, offices, liberties, goods, and chattels, or infringe the established laws. This has been often noticed as an instance of servile compliance. It is, however, a striking testimony to the free constitution it infringed, and demonstrates that the prerogative could not soar to the heights it aimed at, till thus imped by the perfidious hand of parliament. It is also to be observed, that the power given to the king's proclamations is considerably limited.[45]