![]() ![]() For this he was severely reprimanded by the Privy Council. ![]() ![]() The earliest recorded parliamentary objections were raised in the Commons during the 1571 Parliament by Robert Bell who complained that ‘by lycenses a fewe were enriched and the multitude impoverished’. Her failure to respond to earlier parliamentary protests about licences and monopolies therefore meant that by 1601 they became the focus of one of the most dramatic constitutional confrontations of the reign. Patents were authorized solely by the royal prerogative but when they turned out to be damaging this conflicted with the notion of ‘commonwealth’ that Elizabeth had explicitly entrusted Parliament to uphold. Such monopolies, although usually glossed as being in some way beneficial to the commonwealth, had harmful consequences that became a serious grievance under the harsh economic conditions of the 1590s. For this reason an increasing number were issued from the late 1580s onwards, including some that were nothing more than sinecures. The patent system was originally intended to foster economic growth, encourage investment and enterprise, and create employment for the poor however, patents of monopoly also provided a source of extra-parliamentary revenue to the Crown and were a means of rewarding courtiers who brought new ‘projects’ to the queen’s attention. 199) The term ‘commonwealth’ referred to the state as a whole and also the common good of the people it had many uses in justifying both social and economic legislation and royal policy such as the granting of licences to enforce penal statutes or trade in prohibited commodities, and patents to protect new inventions and industries. ( Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, ed. Elizabeth defined the role of Parliament in her eyes by instructing the Commons to ‘meddle with noe matters of state but such as should be propounded unto them, and to occupy themselves in other matters concerning the commen wealth’. ![]()
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