A Bibliography of Royal Proclamations of the Tudor and Stuart Sovereigns and of others published under authority 1485-1714 by Robert Steele, Bibliotheca Lindesiana vol V, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910. https://earlycharitylawsources.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/BibliothecaLindesiana-TudorStuartProclamations1910.pdf
Royal proclamations were, and still are, official announcements printed and published by the King or Queen, or by ministers under their authority. Though still sometimes used by government, you don’t see many in modern times; but they were issued often in the past. They dealt with every kind of subject imaginable. Some, not many but more than a few, dealt with charity matters.
This book lists and briefly describes 4,546 royal proclamations issued from 1485 to 1714. It numbers them all sequentially with a unique number, e.g. “Steele 1016” (after the compiler). This number is used as the standard identifying number for UK proclamations by librarians and archivists.
The book’s descriptions also provide references to the publications, libraries and archives where copies of each can be found (or at least could be found in 1910).
There is also a list of about 1,400 pre-Tudor proclamations issued from 1205 to 1485, at pp clvii to clxxvi. These are only dated and briefly captioned, not given a Steele number.
Using this reference work, users can, in theory, find any proclamation that dealt with a charity issue, up to 1714. It seems unlikely that any charity-related proclamations were issued subsequently, since by then Chancery and later courts came to dominate charity matters.
There are as it happens modern editions of the proclamations from 1485 to 1714 which you might find in a good library:
- Tudor Royal Proclamations, 3 volumes, by Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, Yale UP, 1964-69;
- Stuart Royal Proclamations, vol 1, by the same authors; vol 2, is only by James F. Larkin; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973, 1983.