(1509) The reign of Henry VIII was one of personal government; and in those days personal government resulted in a small output of law-making by Parliament. Indeed, after 1523, under Cardinal Wolsey, Parliament was not summoned for seven years. In 1539 the attempt to do without popular legislation is shown in the act already referred to, giving royal proclamations of the king and council the force of law, a definite attempt at personal government which might have resulted in the establishment of an administrative law fashioned by the executive, had it not been for the sturdy opposition of the people under weaker reigns. But under the reign of Henry VIII also the great right of free speech in Parliament was established; and in 1514 the king manumitted two villeins with the significant words "Whereas God created all men free," vulgarly supposed to be original with our Declaration of Independence. The important principle of a limitation for prosecutions by the government for penal offences dates from the first year of Henry VIII, the period being put, as it still is, at three years; and it is expressed to be for better peace and justice and to avoid the taking up of old charges after the evidence has disappeared. In 1515 is another act of apparel providing, among other things, that the king only shall wear cloth-of-gold or purple color, or black fur, and that no man under the degree of a knight may wear "pinched Shirts." In this reign also comes the famous Statute of Wills, permitting the disposal of land by devise, the Statute of Uses and other matters primarily of interest to the lawyer; the first Bankruptcy Act and the first legislation recognizing the duty of the secular law to support the poor, perfected only under Queen Elizabeth; but in the latter part of his reign there is little law-making that need concern us. The Statutes of Apparel continue, and the statutes fixing the price of wine, which, indeed, seems to have been the last subject so regulated. There is the "Bloody Statute" against heresy, and the first act against witchcraft, Tindale's translation of the Bible is prohibited, and women and laborers forbidden to read the New Testament. There is the first act for the preservation of the river Thames, and also for the cleaning of the river at Canterbury; and the first game law protecting wild-fowl, and a law "for the breeding of horses" to be over fifteen hands. The king is allowed to make bishops and dissolve monasteries; physicians are required to be licensed. The regrating of wools and fish is again forbidden, and finally there is an act for the true making of Pynnes; that is to say, they are to be double headed and the heads "soudered fast to the Shanke."