208 OBSERVATIONS ON BISHOP BURNETT'S 
accessible only to the initiated ; and that Collier belonged to this 
class is an inference which may be fairly deduced from the passage 
which we shall now quote. Burnett affirmed that “ the authority of the 
privy council had been raised so high by the celebrated statute of the 
3lst of Henry VIII, cap. 8, that they were empowered sufficiently 
for displacing the lord chancellor, or putting him out of office ;” to 
which the erudite nonjuror replies that “if the privy council had no 
other warrant to support their proceedings than this act, ’tis pretty 
plain they exceeded their authority, as the statute relates only to pro- 
clamations, and it is expressly provided, that the words, meaning, and 
intent of this act be not misunderstood, and that by virtue of it any 
of the king’s liege people, so should have any of his or her inheri- 
tances, lawful possessions, offices, privileges, franchises, goods or 
chattels, taken from them ;” which word office, Collier says, ‘ brings 
the lord chancellor’s case fully within the saving of the statute.” As 
if, after the statute was framed, the king by his councils (for the 
king and his council are to be regarded in the same relation to each 
other as the king and the two houses of parliament stand at present, 
the supreme legislative authority having been lodged, from the time 
of the conquest, not in the king alone, but in the king and the great 
council conjointly) could not deprive a lord chancellor of his office, 
to which no colour of right was ever set up, to justify the charge 
that it was hereditary. y 
Now the office of high constable was hereditary ; and Collier may 
be considered to have as much put aside the weight of argument and 
authority in his anomalous novelty respecting the office of chancellor, 
as if he had asserted that the king, by the advice of his council, com- 
mitted an illegal act when he ordered the head of Edward, Duke of 
Buckingham, the then high constable, to be cut off, on the charge of 
high treason. Collier, too, seems quite to haye forgotten, in his 
eagerness to convict Burnett of inaccuracy in his facts and reasoning, 
that this memorable statute or ordinance* of Henry gave the king’s 
proclamation, to a certain extent, the force of an act of parliament, 
though long before it had been a settled point that no proclamation 
* Some of our lawyers maintain, that broad lines of distinction are to be 
found between these two terms. Whitelocke, whose legal acquirements were 
qualified, not only to discuss, but to settle, this knotty point, has observed, 
“If there be any difference between an ordinance and a statute, as some 
have collected, it is but only this, that an ordinance is but temporary, till 
confirmed and made perpetual, and so have some ordinances also been. ”—See 
Parliamentary Writ. vol ii, p. 297. 
