_Instances of illegal proclamations not numerous._--Those encroachments on the legislative supremacy of parliament, and on the personal rights of the subject, by means of proclamations issued from the privy council, which had rendered former princes of both the Tudor and Stuart families almost arbitrary masters of their people, had fallen with the odious tribunal by which they were enforced. The king was restored to nothing but what the law had preserved to him. Few instances appear of illegal proclamations in his reign. One of these, in 1665, required all officers and soldiers who had served in the armies of the late usurped powers to depart the cities of London and Westminster, and not to return within twenty miles of them before the November following. This seems connected with the well-grounded apprehension of a republican conspiracy.[10] Another, immediately after the fire of London, directed the mode in which houses should be rebuilt, and enjoined the lord mayor and other city magistrates to pull down whatsoever obstinate and refractory persons might presume to erect upon pretence that the ground was their own; and especially that no houses of timber should be erected for the future.[11] Though the public benefit of this restriction, and of some order as to the rebuilding of a city which had been destroyed in great measure through the want of it, was sufficiently manifest, it is impossible to justify the tone and tenor of this proclamation; and more particularly as the meeting of parliament was very near at hand. But an act having passed therein for the same purpose, the proclamation must be considered as having had little effect. Another instance, and far less capable of extenuation, is a proclamation for shutting up coffee-houses, in December 1675. I have already mentioned this as an intended measure of Lord Clarendon. Coffee-houses were all at that time subject to a licence, granted by the magistrates at quarter sessions. But, the licences having been granted for a certain time, it was justly questioned whether they could in any manner be revoked. This proclamation being of such disputable legality, the judges, according to North, were consulted, and intimating to the council that they were not agreed in opinion upon the most material questions submitted to them, it seemed advisable to recall it.[12] In this essential matter of proclamations, therefore, the administration of Charles II. is very advantageously compared with that of his father; and considering at the same time the entire cessation of impositions of money without consent of parliament, we must admit that, however dark might be his designs, there were no such general infringements of public liberty in his reign as had continually occurred before the long parliament.