ORDINANCE

An obsolete word signifying a decree or enactment. After the time of Philip le Bel (1227), the laws made by French kings were generally termed ordinances (ordonnance); a term which, in its most comprehensive sense, included also their edicts, declarations, and letters patent. The right to i ue ordinances for the execution of the laws (equivalent to proclamations and orders in council) is conferred on the monarch by the French charters; and it was on an ambiguity of language in the clause conferring this right in that of 1814, that a defence was attempted for the illegal proceedings of the ministers of Charles X. in 1830. The best collection of the Ordonnanres des Rois de France is that begun by order of Louig XW., of which the first volume app i-ared in 1723: it extends to 12 vols, folio. The Self-denying Ordinance, in English History, was a ORDINATION. resolution of the Long Parliament, in 1644, by which its members bound themselves not to take certain executive offices, particularly commands in the army; the effect of which, as is well known, was the transference of power, first in the the army, and then in the state, from the Presbyterian to the Independent party. [s. 867]