Footnote 7: Henry had excited feelings of confidence and admiration in the minds of foreign potentates, as well as in his subjects at home. Among the embassies, with offers and pledges of friendship and amity, which hastened to his court on his accession, are numbered those of John of Portugal, Robert Duke of Albany, Regent of Scotland, John King of Castile, John Duke of Brittany, Charles King of France, and Pope John XXIII.[(back)]
Footnote 8: Sir Edward Coke, in his 4th Inst. ch. i. declares that this act was disavowed in the next parliament by the Commons, for that they never assented. The Author has searched the Parliament Rolls in vain for the authority on which that assertion was founded.[(back)]
Footnote 9: The Monday after Corpus Christi day; which feast, being the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, fell in the year 1413 on June 22.[(back)]
Footnote 10: This Dr. Walden (so called from the place of his birth in Essex) was so able a disputant that he was called the Netter. He seems to have written many works, which are either totally lost, or are buried in temporary oblivion.[(back)]
Footnote 11: Goodwin. Appendix, p. 361.[(back)]
Footnote 12: Minutes of Council, 29 June 1413.[(back)]
Footnote 13: Many original petitions addressed to Henry are still preserved among our records. In one, which may serve as a specimen of the kind of application to which this custom compelled him to open his ear, Richard Hunt appeals to him as a "right merciable lord, moved with pity, mercy, and grace." "In great desolation and heaviness of heart," the petitioner states that his son-in-law, Richard Peke, who had a wife and four children, and had been all his life a true labourer and innocent man, and well-beloved by his neighbours, had been detected in taking from a vessel goods not worth three shillings; for which crime his mortal enemies (though they might have their property again) "sued to have him dead." He urges Henry to grant him "full noble grace," at the reverence of Almighty God, and for passion that Christ suffered for all mankind, and for the pity that he had on Mary Magdalene. The petitioner then promised (as petitioners now do) to pray for endless mercy on Henry; he adds, moreover, what would certainly sound strange in a modern petition to a monarch, "And ye, gracious and sovereign lord, shall have a good ox to your larder." Henry granted the petition. "The King woll that this bill pass without any manner of fine, or fees that longeth to him."[(back)]
Footnote 14: The Pell Rolls acquaint us with the very great expense incurred on this occasion.[(back)]
Footnote 15: Dugdale's Baronage.[(back)]
Footnote 16: Minutes of Council, 21 May and 10 Dec. 1415. Addit. MS. 4600. Art. 147.[(back)]