ird died in a dishonoured old age,
robbed on his death-bed even of his rings by the mistress to whom he clung,
and the accession of his grandson, Richard the Second, changed the whole
face of affairs. The Duke withdrew from Court, and sought a reconciliation
with the party opposed to him. The men of the Good Parliament surrounded
the new king, and a Parliament which assembled in October took vigorously
up its work. Peter de la Mare was released from prison and replaced in the
chair of the House of Commons. The action of the Lower House indeed was as
trenchant and comprehensive as that of the Good Parliament itself. In
petition after petition the Commons demanded the confirmation of older
rights and the removal of modern abuses. They complained of administrative
wrongs such as the practice of purveyance, of abuses of justice, of the
oppressions of officers of the exchequer and of the forest, of the ill
state of prisons, of the customs of "maintenance" and "livery" by which
lords extended their protection to shoals of disorderly persons and
overawed the courts by means of them. Amid ecclesiastical abuses they noted
the state of the Church courts, and the neglect of the laws of Provisors.
They demanded that the annual assembly of Parliament, which had now become
customary, should be defined by law, and that bills once sanctioned by the
Crown should be forthwith turned into statutes without further amendment or
change on the part of the royal Council. With even greater boldness they
laid hands on the administration itself. They not only demanded that the
evil counsellors of the last reign should be removed, and that the
treasurer of the subsidy on wool should account for its expenditure to the
lords, but that the royal Council should be named in Parliament, and chosen
from members of either estate of the realm. Though a similar request for
the nomination of the officers of the royal household was refused, their
main demand was granted. It was agreed that the great officers of state,
the chancellor, treasurer, and barons of exchequer should be named by the
lords in Parliament, and removed from their offices during the king's
"tender years" only on the advice of the lords. The pressure of the war,
which rendered the existing taxes insufficient, gave the House a fresh hold
on the Crown. While granting a new subsidy in the form of a land and
property tax, the Commons restricted its proceeds to the war, and assigned
two of their me