[] 13 R. II. p. 256.
[x] This proceeding was made one of the articles of charge against Richard in the following terms: Item, in parliamento ultimo celebrato apud Salopiam, idem rex proponens opprimere populum suum procuravit subtiliter et fecit concedi, quod potestas parliamenti de consensu omnium statuum regni sui remaneret apud quasdam certas personas ad terminandum, dissoluto parliamento, certas petitiones in eodem parliamento porrectas protunc minimè expeditas. Cujus concessionis colore personæ sic deputatæ processerunt ad alia generaliter parliamentum illud tangentia; et hoc de voluntate regis; in derogationem statûs parliamenti, et in magnum incommodum totius regni et perniciosum exemplum. Et ut super factis eorum hujusmodi aliquem colorem et auctoritatem viderentur habere, rex fecit rotulos parliamenti pro voto suo mutari et deleri, contra effectum consensionis prædictæ. Rot. Parl. 1 H. IV. vol. iii. p. 418. Whether the last accusation, of altering the parliamentary roll, be true or not, there is enough left in it to prove everything I have asserted in the text. From this it is sufficiently manifest how unfairly Carte and Hume have drawn a parallel between this self-deputed legislative commission and that appointed by parliament to reform the administration eleven years before.
[y] Rot. Parl. p. 372, 385.
[z] Besides the contemporary historians, we may read a full narrative of these proceedings in the Rolls of Parliament, vol. iii. p. 382. It appears that Mowbray was the most offending party, since, independently of Hereford's accusation, he is charged with openly maintaining the appeals made in the false parliament of the eleventh of the king. But the banishment of his accuser was wholly unjustifiable by any motives that we can discover. It is strange that Carte should express surprise at the sentence upon the duke of Norfolk, while he seems to consider that upon Hereford as very equitable. But he viewed the whole of this reign, and of those that ensued, with the jaundiced eye of Jacobitism.
[a] Rot. Parl. 1 H. IV. p. 420, 426; Walsingham, p. 353, 357; Otterburn, p. 199; Vita Ric. II. p. 147.
[] It is fair to observe that Froissart's testimony makes most in favour of the king, or rather against his enemies, where it is most valuable; that is, in his account of what he heard in the English court in 1395, 1. iv. c. 62, where he gives a very indifferent character of the duke of Gloucester. In general this writer is ill-informed of English affairs, and undeserving to be quoted as an authority.
[c] Rot. Parl. p. 423.
[d] If proof could be required of anything so self-evident as that these assemblies consisted of exactly the same persons, it may be found in their writs of expenses, as published by Prynne, 4th Register, p. 450.
[e] 2 R. II. p. 56.
[f] It is positively laid down by the asserters of civil liberty, in the great case of impositions (Howell's State Trials, vol. ii. p. 443, 507), that no precedents for arbitrary taxation of exports or imports occur from the accession of Richard II. to the reign of Mary.