It need scarcely be said that no such right belonged ex officio to these three magnates, or was even claimed by them. Yet no one has suggested, so far as I know, that there must have been a reason for inserting this clause, and that in such reason we may find a note of time. Ordainers were elected, under Edward II., in 1310, and a Commission under Richard II. in 1386. No one, it is certain, could have introduced the reference to an “Earl Marshal” in 1310, for Thomas, future marshal of England; was then only a boy of ten. But in 1386 there was, in Nottingham, an Earl Marshal, and one who was, at the time, taking a leading part. Indeed the three chiefs of the opposition at the time were Gloucester, Derby, and Nottingham, who respectively represented the Constable, the Steward,[647] and the Marshal. Add to this that it was in the Parliament of 1386 that we find the precedent of Edward II. prominent in the minds of men,[648] and that it was also in this Parliament that appeal was made to a supposed statute, and that the ‘Modus’ contains a chapter “De Absentia regis in Parliamento” (a grievance in 1386), and we have at least a fair presumption that the ‘Modus’—at any rate in the form that has reached us—dates from the constitutional crisis of 1386.[649]
I shall now close this article, which has already exceeded its original limits, with a document hitherto unknown, I believe, to English historians. The Rolls of Parliament preserve, in the proceedings of 1397 against Gloucester, the appeal of treason presented to the king by the nobles of his party at Nottingham (5th Aug., 1395). But that appeal is not known to us at first hand. I believe that I have found the terms of the document, which correspond, it will be seen, with the printed version. But instead of closing with the words “soit enterment quasse et adnulle,” as in the Rolls of Parliament (iii. 341), it proceeds:
laquelle bille nous le prouuerons pour vray avec laide de Dieu et de sa benoiste mere tant comme la vie nous dure.
Then follows, in parallel columns, the interesting portion of the document, namely, the five articles of accusation, which are, it will be found, largely different and much shorter than on the Rolls. Opposite them is a notable confession which, from evidence it contains, I assign to the duke of Gloucester.
| P[re]mierement comment ilz voloient auoir depose monsr. | Beauz seignors je vous prie a tous mercy et vous prie que vous veulliez dire a Monsr le Roy que il pregne garde de mon filz, quar sil nest chastie tant quil est jeune, il me resembleira, et je fiz faussete et traison a monsr mon pere, et ai pense et eusse mis a execution contre monsr le Roy contre mon neveu de Rottheland et mon cousin le mareschal et pluss autres(;) dedens xv jours ilz eussent este mors et madame la este mors et madame la Royne envoiee arriere en France, et fait du royaulme ce que nous eussions voulu. Et avions ordonne de rendre tous les hommages a ceulx qui eussent este de nostre part. Si preng en grace ce que Monsr me fera quar jai bien desire la mort. |
| Item. Ilz le constraindirent a leur donner pouoir par letres a lencontre de sa regalie et les libertes de sa couronne. | |
| Item. Ils le voloient auoir prins par force hors de son chastel et lauoir amene tout partout ou ilz voloient et prins son grant seel deuers eulz. | |
| Item. Le vouloient auoir assailli dedens sa tour de Londres lui estant dedens a sa festedu Noel. | |
| Item. Depuis ont ilz persevere en leur traison et tant quilz ont ymagine et ordene dauoir destruit et mis a mort ceulx qui furent entour la personne de Monsr. |
From internal evidence this confession must (if genuine) proceed from an uncle of the king, who can only be the duke of Gloucester. I believe him to have sent it from his prison at Calais, after his arrest and deportation thither by the “Earl Marshal of England.”
Such documents as this still lurk here and there in MS. Their discovery rewards, at rare intervals, the toil of original research, as in those I have printed above bearing on the Commune of London. To this research, as Dr. Stubbs has urged, historians have now to look;[650] but for it, in England, at the present time, there is neither inducement nor reward.[651]
NOTE
On page 21 I speak of Mr. Andrew Lang “tracing the occurrence in scattered counties of the same clan name to the existence of exogamy among our forefathers.” This view, which (as I there state) was adopted by Mr. Grant Allen, is set forth in his notes to Aristotle’s ‘Politics’ (Ed. Bolland, 1877), pp. 96, 99, 101. To show that I have in no way misrepresented that view, I append these extracts:
the sibsceaft, or kinship, which, when settled within its own mark of land, is known in early Teutonic history as the Markgenossenschaft. Whether in Greece, Rome, or England, not to mention other countries, the members of each of these kinships all bore the same patronymic name, etc., etc.