Soon after this a Parliament was called. The Crown was in need of money; but Somerset did not dare to convoke the legislature at Westminster. It met in the refectory of the abbey of Reading on the 6th of March. In the absence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Kemp, who was Chancellor, the Bishop of Lincoln[127.1] opened the proceedings by a speech on behalf of the king, declaring the causes of their being summoned; which were merely stated to be, in general terms, for the good government of the kingdom and for its outward defence. The necessity of sending reinforcements into Gascony was not mentioned, and apparently was not thought of; for up to this time the success of Shrewsbury had been uninterrupted, and the French king had not yet begun his southward march. The Commons elected one Thomas Thorpe as their Speaker, and presented him to the king on the 8th. Within three weeks they voted a tenth and fifteenth, a subsidy of tonnage and poundage, a subsidy on wools, hides, and woolfells, and a capitation tax on aliens,—all these, except the tenth and fifteenth, to be levied for the term of the king’s natural life. They also ordained that every county, city, and town should be charged to raise its quota towards the levying of a body of 20,000 archers within four months. For these important services they received the thanks of the king, communicated to them by the Chancellor, and were immediately prorogued over Easter, to sit at Westminster on the 25th of April.[127.2]
On their reassembling there, they proceeded to arrange the proportion of the number of archers which should be raised in each county, and the means by which they were to be levied. The Commons, however, were relieved of the charge of providing 7000 men of the number formerly agreed to, as 3000 were to be charged upon the Lords and 3000 more on Wales and the county palatine of Cheshire, while an additional thousand was [128] remitted by the king, probably as the just proportion to be levied out of his own household. For the remaining 13,000, the quota of each county was then determined. But soon afterwards it was found that the need of such a levy was not so urgent as had at first been supposed, and the actual raising of the men was respited for two years, provided that no emergency arose requiring earlier need of their services.[128.1]
The possibility of their being required in Gascony after the success of the Earl of Shrewsbury in the preceding year, seems no more to have occurred to the Government, than the thought of sending them to Constantinople, where possibly, had the fact been known, they might at this very time have done something to prevent that ancient city from falling into the hands of the Turks. For it was in this very year, and while these things occupied the attention of the English Parliament, that the long decaying Eastern Empire was finally extinguished by the fall of its metropolis.
After this, some new Acts were passed touching the pay of the garrison at Calais, and for the making of jetties and other much-needed repairs there. For these purposes large sums of money were required, and the mode in which they were to be provided gives us a remarkable insight into the state of the exchequer. To the Duke of Somerset, as Captain of Calais, there was owing a sum of £21,648, 10s., for the wages of himself and his suite since the date of his appointment; and on the duke’s own petition, an Act was passed enabling him to be paid, not immediately, but after his predecessor, Humphrey, Duke of Buckingham, should have received all that was due to him in a like capacity.[128.2] The pay of the officers of Calais, it would thus appear, but that it seems to have been discharged by the Captain for the time being out of his own resources, must at this time have been more than two years in arrear. If such was the state of matters, we gain some light on the causes which induced Somerset, after his loss of Normandy, to add to his unpopularity by accepting a post of so much responsibility as the Captainship of Calais. He was one of the few men in England whose wealth was such that he could afford to [129] wait for his money; and he was too responsible for the rotten government which had led to such financial results to give any other man a post in which he would certainly have found cause of dissatisfaction.
It was necessary, however, to provide ready money for the repairs and the wages of the garrison from this time, and it was accordingly enacted that a half of the fifteenth and tenth already voted should be immediately applied to the one object, and a certain proportion of the subsidy on wools to the other. At the same time a new vote of half a fifteenth and tenth additional was found necessary to meet the extraordinary expenditure, and was granted on the 2nd of July.[129.1]
This grant being announced by the Speaker to the king, who was then sitting in Parliament, Henry thanked the Commons with his own mouth, and then commissioned the chancellor, Cardinal Kemp, to prorogue the assembly; alleging as his reasons the consideration due to the zeal and attendance of the Commons, and the king’s own intention of visiting different parts of his kingdom for the suppression of various malpractices. ‘The king, also,’ he added, ‘understood that there were divers petitions exhibited in the present Parliament to which no answer had yet been returned, and which would require greater deliberation and leisure than could now conveniently be afforded, seeing that the autumn season was at hand, in which the Lords were at liberty to devote themselves to hunting and sport, and the Commons to the gathering in of their harvests.’ As these weighty matters, whatever they were, required too much consideration to be disposed of before harvest-time, we might perhaps have expected an earlier day to be fixed for the reassembling of the legislature than that which was actually then announced. Perhaps, also, we might have expected that as the Parliament had returned to Westminster, it would have been ordered to meet there again when it renewed its sittings. But the king, or his counsellors, were of a different opinion; and the Parliament was ordered to meet again on the 12th of November at Reading.
Long before that day came, calamities of no ordinary kind [130] had overtaken both king and nation. About the beginning of August,[130.1] news must have come to England of the defeat and death of the Earl of Shrewsbury; and Somerset at last was quickened into action when it was too late. Great preparations were made for sending an army into Guienne, when Guienne was already all but entirely lost. It is true the Government were aware of the danger in which Talbot stood for want of succours, at least as early as the 14th of July; even then they were endeavouring to raise money by way of loan, and to arrest ships and sailors. But it is evident that they had slept too long in false security, and when they were for the first time thoroughly awake to the danger, the disaster was so near at hand that it could not possibly have been averted.[130.2]
[111.1] Whethamstede, 317.
[111.2] The names are all entered on the Pardon Roll of 30 and 31 Henry VI. Among the hosts of less interesting names, we find that the Duke of York took out a pardon on the 3rd of June; the Duke of Norfolk and the young Duke of Suffolk on the 23rd of the same month; Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, on the 1st; Thomas Courtenay, Earl of Devon, on the 20th, and Sir William Oldhall, who is called of Hunsdon, on the 26th. Ralph, Lord Cromwell, had one on the 22nd May, and Robert Wynnyngton of Dartmouth (the writer of Letter 90) on the 28th July. On the 12th July a joint pardon was given to Sir Henry Percy, Lord Ponynges, and Eleanor, his wife, kinswoman and heir of Sir Robert Ponynges. At later dates we have also pardons to Henry, Viscount Bourchier, and Sir John Talbot, son and heir of the Earl of Shrewsbury.
[112.1] No. 210.