_Government of Edward VI.'s counsellors._--The ill-assorted body of counsellors who exercised the functions of regency by Henry's testament, were sensible that they had not sinews to wield his iron sceptre, and that some sacrifice must be made to a nation exasperated as well as overawed by the violent measures of his reign. In the first session accordingly of Edward's parliament, the new treasons and felonies which had been created to please his father's sanguinary disposition, were at once abrogated.[47] The statute of Edward III. became again the standard of high treason, except that the denial of the king's supremacy was still liable to its penalties. The same act, which relieves the subject from these terrors, contains also a repeal of that which had given legislative validity to the king's proclamations. These provisions appear like an elastic recoil of the constitution after the extraordinary pressure of that despotic reign. But, however they may indicate the temper of parliament, we must consider them but as an unwilling and insincere compliance on the part of the government. Henry, too arrogant to dissemble with his subjects, had stamped the law itself with the print of his despotism. The more wily courtiers of Edward's council deemed it less obnoxious to violate than to new-mould the constitution. For, although proclamations had no longer the legal character of statutes, we find several during Edward's reign enforced by penalty of fine and imprisonment. Many of the ecclesiastical changes were first established by no other authority, though afterwards sanctioned by parliament. Rates were thus fixed for the price of provisions; bad money was cried down, with penalties on those who should buy it under a certain value, and the melting of the current coin prohibited on pain of forfeiture.[48] Some of these might possibly have a sanction from precedent, and from the acknowledged prerogative of the crown in regulating the coin. But no legal apology can be made for a proclamation in April 1549, addressed to all justices of the peace, enjoining them to arrest sowers and tellers abroad of vain and forged tales and lies, and to commit them to the galleys, there to row in chains as slaves during the king's pleasure.[49] One would imagine that the late statute had been repealed, as too far restraining the royal power, rather than as giving it an unconstitutional extension.