Statutes to
be made
without
altering the
words of the
petitions on
which they
axe based.
Promotion
of the king’s
brothers and
other kins-
men, 1414.
Confiscation
of the alien
priories.
Negotia-
tions with
France,
84 Constitutional History. [chap.
quiet one ; the estates granted tunnage and poundage for three
years, and obtained one great constitutional boon, for which
the parliaments of Edward III and Richard II had striven in
vain ; the commons prayed, that ‘ as it hath been ever their
liberty and freedom that there should no statute or law be
made unless they gave thereto their assent,’ ‘ there never be
no law made ’ on their petition ‘ and ingrossed as statute and
law, neither by addition nor by diminution, by no manner of
term or terms the which should change the sentence and the
intent asked.’ The king, in reply, granted that t from hence-
forth nothing be enacted to the petitions of his commons that
be contrary to their asking, whereby they should be bound
without their assent; saving al way to our liege lord his pre-
rogative to grant and deny what him list of their petitions
and askings aforesaid In this session the king created his
brothers John and Humfrey dukes of Bedford and Gloucester,
and his cousin Richard of York, earl of Cambridge. The duke
of York was declared loyal and relieved from the risks which
had been impending since 1400; and Thomas Beaufort was
confirmed in the possession of the earldom of Dorset2. The
possessions of the alien priories, which had, since the beginning
of the war under Edward III, retained a precarious hold on
their English estates, were, on the petition of the commons,
taken for perpetuity into the king’s hands 3.
Although the rolls of parliament are completely silent on the
subject, it may be fairly presumed that the question of war
with France was mooted at the Leicester parliament ; for, on
the 31 st of May, a few days after the close of the session which
ended May 19, the bishop of Durham and lord Grey were
accredited as ambassadors to Charles VI with instructions to
negotiate an alliance, and to debate on the restoration of
Henry’s rights—rights which were summed up in his here-
ditary assumption of the title of King of France4. It is not
improbable that the design of a great war was now generally
1 Rot. Parl. ɪv. 22. 2 lb. iv. 17.
3 lb. iv. 22 ; Mon. Angl. vi. 1642 ; Rymer, ix. 280, 281.
4 Rymer, ɪɪ. 131.
χvlll.] Preparations for war. 85
acceptable to the nation. The magnates were heartily tired of Pr∞pect
internal struggles, and the lull of war with Scots and Welsh
gave them the opportunity of turning their arms against the
ancient foe. The king himself was ambitious of military glory
and inherited the long-deferred designs of his father, his
alliances, and his preparations. The clergy were willing to
further the promotion of a national design which at the same
time would save the church from the attacks of the Lollards1.
The people also were ready, as in prosperous times they always
were, to regard the dynastic aims of the king as the lawful
and indispensable safeguards of the nation. The historians share of the
who in the later part of the century looked back through the promoting
obscurity of the civil war and the humiliation of the house of
Lancaster, and still more the writers of the next century, who
visited the sins of the clergy upon their predecessors, asset ted
that the war was precipitated by the line of defence taken up
by the bishops against the Lollards; and according to the
chronicler Hall the parliament of Leicester saw the first mea-
sures taken2. The story runs that the petition of 1410 was
introduced again by the Wycliffite knights, .and that in reply
archbishop Chichele suggested and argued for a French war,
the old earl of Westmoreland answering him and recommending
instead a war with Scotland. These exact particulars cannot
be true ; Chichele did not sit as archbishop in the Leicester
parliament, and the speeches bear manifest tokens of later com-
position 3. But it is by no means improbable that, the project
1 See Fabyan, p. 578; Leland, Coll. ii. 490. ‘It was concluded by the
said council, and in especial by the spiritualty, that he should go and get
Normandy, and they should help him to their power. It is said that the
spiritualty feared sore, that if he had not had to do without the land, that
he would have laboured for to have take fro the church the temporal
possessions, and therefore they concluded among themself that they should
stir him for to go and make war over sea in France, for to conquer his
rightful inheritance ; ’ Cont. Polychr. (ed. 1527), f. 329.
2 Hall, Chr. p. 49.
3 The parliament sat from April ʒo to May 19 ; Lords’ Report, i. 497.
Chichele had the royal assent to his election March 23 ; but he was not
Provided by the pope until April 27, and received the temporalities only
θo May 30. His name does not occur either as archbishop or as bishop of
h∙ David’s in the parliamentary roll. Hall (Chr. p. 49) says that he was
Oewly made archbishop, having before been a Carthusian (!;. But the