20o CoiisCiLutional History. [chap.
Se∞unc∏ couuc^ ɪ`eiaiɪɪθtl the right of advising the king in knotty cases
and appeals, in which the opinion of the judges was likewise
Legislative asked. As to powers of legislation and taxation, the parliament
authority. ɪ o . t
was more liberal; the power of ordaining relaxations of the
statutes of the staple or of provisors was formally intrusted to
the king and council ’ ; they were watched, and, when the
result was bad, were requested to abstain from or suspend
authority proceedings. Financial business was also expressly intrusted
to them, almost from the beginning of the Lancastrian reigns ;
a fact which, while it shows the confidence felt by the nation
in the honesty of the king and his ministers, proves Unmistake-
ably the great difficulty of obtaining supplies, the poverty of
Varietyof the crown, and the scarcity of money. To go through the
expedients, particular expedients adopted by the council itself would be
to write the whole financial history of the time ; it was by
the advice of the council that the king was able to borrow
money by writs of privy eeal2 ; more than once the members
contributed gifts or loans from their private purses to meet
an emergency3, or gave personal security, or wrote letters of
personal application to lords or merchants4. In the most
important junctures, however, they received power from par-
liament, either to stop the outgoings of money5, or to give
security for the large loans by which the accruing taxes were
anticipated. In the year 1421 the lords of the Councilwere
empowered by parliament to give security for the king’s debts
Counciiem- incurred in the proposed expedition to France6. Up to this
powered to x x ɪ . ~
give security time the loans had generally been obtained by assigning to
the creditor certain portions of the revenue7; thus bishop
Beaufort’s great loans had been recovered by him from the
customs8; sometimes the credit of the lords was pledged, as
dispute whether this was a new court or an old one : Coke, 4 Inst. p. 61 ;
Lambard, Archeion, pp. 163 sq.
1 Kot. ParI. iii. 428, 491. 2 Ordinances, ii. 31, 280, 281.
3 As in 1400, see above, p. 28; Ordinances, i. 104, 105; in 1425, ib.
iii. 167.
4 See Ordinances, i. 200 s>q. (1403); 343, 347 (1410^.
s Ordinances, iii. 348.
6 Rot. Parl. iv. 130.
7 lb. iv. 95, 96; Ordinances, ii. 170.
s Rot. Parl. iv. ɪiɪ, 132, 210, 275, &c., 496.
XVIII.]
TJie Privy Cmmcll.
261
in 14191. From 1421, however, the mere prudent practice
was followed with some regularity; the Burns for which the
council were authorised to give security increased from £20,000
in 14252 to £40,000 in 1426, £24,000 in 1427s, £50,000 in
1429 and 14314, 100,000 marks in 1433 5, and £100,000 in
1435, 1437, 1439, 1442, and 1447δ. After the death of
cardinal Beaufort these acts of security disappear, and other
expedients were adopted, which illustrate both the exigencies
of the court and the waning confidence placed by the country
in the privy council.
The office of the council in hearing petitions addressed to Petitions
, heard in
the king continues during the period before us much the council,
same as it had been under Edward III and Richard ; the
chamberlain being the officer to whose care such documents
were intrusted. The jealousy of the commons was not aroused
by the quasi-judicial character of the proceedings, as it was
against the summons by letter of privy seal and the writ of
subpoena. The diversity of petitions which appear on the Variety of
J∙ . η IT* IIT forms of
rolls of parliament, variously addressed to the king, the lords, petition,
the commons, the king and the lords, the lords and the
commons, or the council, must have given employment to
a large class of lawyers, whose action in the parliament itself
was occasionally deprecated. It could only be after much
urgency that such petitions reached either king or council.
Nor was the correspondence of the council at all confined to Correspond-
petitions and their answers ; letters, reports from every depart- council,
ment of state, and applications for money, were addressed to
them as commonly and as freely as to the king himself7.
It is hardly possible to specify particularly the less definite
functions of the council ; they are coextensive on the one hand
1 Rot. Part. iv. 95, 96, 117 ; and in 1434, Ordinances, iv. 202. So too
in 1423 the feoffees of the duchy of Lancaster lent the king Liooo on the
personal security of the lords of the council ; Ordinances, iii. 135.
2 Rot. Parl. iv. 277. 3 lb. iv. 300, 317.
4 lb. iv. 339, 374. 5 lb. iv. 426.
“ lb. iv. 482, 504; v. 7, 39, 135.
7 On the minute points of practice in matters of petitions, see besides
the Rolls of Parliament, passim, and the Proceedings of the Privy Council,
the remarks of Sir Harry Nicolas in the prefaces to the latter work ; i. p.
XXV ; ii. pp. xii, xxxi ; vi. pp. xc sq.