n.
i.: a plain implication that he had not, of himself, such prerogative.

So uncertain were many of these points at that time.
But though the general tenor of the penal statutes was such as gave the king a superior interest in their execution, beyond any of his subjects, it could not but sometimes happen in a mixed government, that the parliament would desire to enact laws by which the regal power, in some particulars, even where private property was not immediately concerned, might be regulated and restrained.

In the twenty-third of Henry VI., a law of this kind was enacted, prohibiting any man from serving in a county as sheriff above a year; and a clause was inserted, by which the king was disabled from granting a dispensation.

Plain reason might have taught, that this law, at least, should be exempted from the king's prerogative: but as the dispensing power still prevailed in other cases, it was soon able, aided by the servility of the courts of judicature, even to overpower this statute, which the legislature had evidently intended to secure against violation.

In the reign of Henry VII., the case was brought to a trial before all the judges in the exchequer chamber; and it was decreed, that, notwithstanding the strict clause above mentioned, the king might dispense with the statute: he could first, it was alleged, dispense with the prohibitory clause, and then with the statute itself.