sanctioned the granting of private petitions, trying from time
to time new expedients in taxation and slight amendments in
the commercial laws. In the session of 1439 ¹ the renewed
grants of subsidies for three years—a fifteenth and tenth and
a half—were supplemented by a tax upon aliens, sixteen pence
on householders, sixpence a head on others² ; and the un-
appropriated revenues of the duchy of Lancaster were devoted
to the charge of the household³.

340. The next year the projects of peace began to take a
more definite form, and Gloucester’s opposition assumed a more
consistent character. On the 2nd of July⁴ the duke of York
was again made lieutenant-general in France, in the place of
Somerset, who had been in command since Warwick’s death,
and who, with his brother Edmund, achieved this year the
great success of retaking Harfleur^s. At the same time the
duke of Orleans, who had been a prisoner in England since
the battle of Agincourt, obtained the order for his release, on
the understanding that he should do his best to bring about

¹ The parliament began Nov. 12 ; on Dec. 21 it was prorogued to meet
at Reading, Jan. 14; William Tresham was speaker; measures were
taken against dishonest purveyors. Convocation granted a tenth ; Wilk.
Cone. iii. 536 ; Rot. Park v. 3; Chron. Lond. pp. J26, 127. Hall com∙
mends the commercial policy of this parliament, p. 187 ; see Rot. Parl. v.
24; Statutes, ii. 302. One act forbade alien merchants to sell to aliens,
put their sales under view of the Exchequer, and ordered them within
eight months to invest the proceeds in English goods. Cf. Stow, p. 377.

² Rot. Parl. v. 4-6; ʒrd Report of Dep. Keeper, App. p. 17. * Alyens
were putte to hyr fynaunce to pay a certayne a y ere to the kynge;’
Gregory, p. 182.

³ The Lancaster inheritance had been preserved as a separate property
of the crown, apart from the royal demesne, by Henry IV ; and Henry V
had added to it the estates inherited from his mother. Great part of it
had however by charters of enfeoffment been put in the hands of trustees
for the payment of his debts, charitable endowments, and trusts of his
will. Of these trustees cardinal Beaufort was the most influential, and
he retained the administration of the lands, according to the belief of
parliament, much longer than was necessary. See Rot. Parl. iii. 428;
iv. 46, 72, 138, 139, 301, 488 ; v. 6.

⁴ Rymer, x. 786. The appointment was for five years. He had not set
out on May 23, 1441 ; Ordinances, v. 146. Hardyng’s statements about
the regency of France and Normandy are peculiar ; he says that the duke
of Burgundy governed for a year after Bedford’s death ; the earl of
Warwick succeeded, p. 396 ; then the earl of Stafford for two years, the
earl of Huntingdon for two, and then the duke of York for seven.

⁵ July to October; Appendix D to Foedera, pρ. 453-459; Stow, p.
376∙

peace with France. This was done notwithstanding tɪie direct violent
opposition and formal protest of Gloucester, who on the 2nd of Gloucester
June disavowed all participation in the actɪ, and followed upandKemp.
his protest by a vigorous attack on his uncle. In this docu-
ment, which was addressed to Henry², the duke embodied his
charges against the cardinal and archbishop Kemp, and vented
all the spite which he had been accumulating for so many
years : the letter assumes the dimensions of a pamphlet, and
is sufficient by itself to establish the writer’s incapacity for
government. Beaufort, according to his nephew’s représenta- Gloucester’s
tion, had obtained the Cardinalate to satisfy his personal pride against
and ambition, and to enable him to assume a place to which ^44<^^fort,
he was not entitled in the synods of the church and in the
council of the king : he had illegally retained or resumed
the see OfAVinchester and deserved the penalties of praemunire;

he and the archbishop of York, his confederate, had usurped
undue influence over the king himself, and had estranged from
him not only the writer but the duke of York and the earl of
Huntingdon, to say nothing of the archbishop of Canterbury;
he had moreover, in his money-lending transactions, sacrificed
the king’s interest to his own ; he had provided extravagantly
for Elizabeth Beauchamp³ and his nephew Swinford ; he had
defrauded the king of the ransom of king James of Scotland by
marrying him to his niece ; he had mismanaged affairs at the
congress of Arras in 1435 and at Calais in 1439 ! ɪɪɪ tɪɪe former
case he had allowed Burgundy and France to be reconciled, in
the latter he had connived at an alliance between Burgundy
and Orleans. The release of tlɪe duke of Orleans simply meant
the renunciation of the kingdom of France ; Beaufort and
Kemp had even gone so far as directly to counsel such a
humiliating act. Public mismanagement, private dishonesty,
and treachery both private and publie, are freely charged
against both the prelates.

¹ Rymer, x. 764-767.

² Stevenson, Wars in France, ii. 440; Hall, Chr. pp. 197-202; Arnold,
Chr. pp. 279-286.

³ Henry V had left this lady ‘300 marks worth of Iyvelode,' if she should
marry within a year. She had waited two years and more; notwithstanding
Beaufort, as his nephew’s executor, had paid the money.

VOL. III.                      K

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