Legal
severities.
Suspension
of parlia-
mentary
action.
Legislative
poverty of
the sessions
of parlia-
ment.
282 Constitutional History. [chap.
considered the country to be in a condition to which the usages
of martial law were fairly applicable. Edward himself took
personal part in the trials of men who had offended him. The
courts of the constable and the marshal sent their victims to
death on frivolous charges and with scant regard for the
privilege of Englishmen. The same reign furnishes the first
authoritative proofs of the use of torture in the attempt to force
the accused to confession or to betray their accomplices.
A few instances of each of these abuses will suffice.
During the twenty-five years of the York dynasty the country
was only seven times called upon to elect a new parliament ;
the sessions of those parliaments which really met extended
over a very few months ; their meetings being frequently held
only for the purpose of prorogation. No parliament sat between
January 1465 and June 1467, or between May 1468 and
October 1472 ; and between January 1475 and January 1483
the assembly was only called together for forty-two days in
1478 to pass the attainder of the duke of Clarence. The early
parliaments had given the king an income for life. The long
intermissions were acquiesced in by the nation, because they
feared additional demands; but it was well known and re-
corded that the king avoided the summoning of parliament
because he anticipated severe criticism on his impolicy and
extravagance. Servile as his parliaments were, he would rather
rule without any such check. The practice of the later years
of Henry VI, during which elections had been as much as
possible avoided, furnished him with precedents for long pro-
rogations ; Edward suspended parliamentary action for years
together ; and England, which had been used to speak its mind
once a year at least, was thus reduced to silence.
The records of the sessions are so barren as to forbid any
regret for their infrequency. The reign of Edward IV, as has
been well said1, is the first reign in our annals in which not
a single enactment is made for increasing the liberty or security
of the subject. Nor can it be alleged that such enactments
were unnecessary, when frequent executions, outrageous usur-
1 Hallam, Middle Ages, ixi. 198.
XVIII.]
Tjenevolences.
283
pations, and local riots form the chief subject of the annals of
the time. Commerce increased : and the increase of commerce Commercud
ιτ л j n legislation.
attests the increase of public confidence, but by no means
justifies the policy which arrests rather than invites that con-
fidence; and commercial activity, especially in such states of
society as that through which England was now passing, was
to some extent a refuge for exhausted families, and a safety-
valve for energies shut out of their proper sphere.
The collection of benevolences, in which the age itself re- Taxation
f by benevo`
cognised a new method of unlawful taxation, is an obscure point, voienccs.
If it were not that both the chroniclers and the statute-book
assert the novel character of the abuse, we might, in the paucity
of records ɪ, be tempted to doubt whether the charge of innova-
1 There is among the Ordinances of the Privy Council, vol. v. pp. 418 sq.,
a set of instructions to commissioners for raising money, which is without
date, but which is referred by Sir R. Cotton to the 20th, by SirH. Nicolas
to the 2 ɪst, and by another modern note to the 15th of Henry VI. They
are directed to assemble the inhabitants of certain towns above the age of
sixteen, and to meet an assembly of the body of the counties to which two
men from each parish are to be summoned by the sheriff : the names of
those present are to be entered in two books, and the commissioners are
thon to explain that by the law the king can call on his subjects to attend
him at their own charges in any part of the land for the defence of the same
against outward enemies ; that he is unwilling to put them to such expense,
and asks them of their own free-will to give him what they can afford ; at
least as much as would be required for two days’ personal service. No
inconvenient language or compulsion is to be used. Another undated
series of instructions, for the collection of men and money for the relief of
Calais, is printed from the same MS. in Ordin. iv. 352. These instruc-
tions, if the date be rightly assigned, would seem to show that the idea of
a benevolence was at all events not .strange under Henry VI ; but there
is no authority for the date, the instructions do not appear ever to have
been issued, and, if any such taxation had taken place, it must have
appeared among the sins laid to the charge of Henry’s government.
Until better information is forthcoming, it would be more reasonable to
refer them to the reign of Edward IV or Henry VII. Other instances in
which such a charge has been made against the Lancaster kings are these :
in 1402 Henry IV wrote to a large number of lords and others accrediting
Sir William Esturmyni pur vous declarer le busoing que nous en (monoye)
avons, Ii quel en ce veuillez croire et faire a notre priere ce qu’il vous
requerera de notre part en celle partie;’ Ord. ii. 73: in 1421 seven
persons were summoned before the council in default of payment of sums
which they had promised to lend the king ; ib. ii. 280 : and in or about
1442 Henry VI wrote to the abbot of S. Edmund’s asking ‘that ye so
tendryng thees our necessitees wol Iene us . . . such a notable summe of
mony to be paied in hande as our servant bearer of thees shall desire
of you.’ In another letter he asks for a loan of ɪoo marks to be secured
by Exchequer tallies; Ellis, Orig. Lett. 3rd series, i. 76-81. Sets of