tion," and they protest
against all interference of the Government; against official
candidatures, and against the election of royal functionaries. On
difficult questions, the members request to be allowed to return to
their counties and consult with their constituents before voting.[412]
In spite of all the aristocratic ideas with which they are still imbued,
many of those audacious members who clamour for reforms and oppose the
king are very inconsiderable people, and such men are seen taking their
seats at Westminster as "Walterus l'espicer," "Paganus le tailour,"
"Radulphus le teynturer," "Ricardus orfevre."[413]

Great is the power of this mixed gathering. No new taxes can be levied
without its consent; every individual, every personage, every authority
having a petition to present, or a complaint to make, sends it to the
assembly of Westminster. The king consults it on peace or war: "So,"
says the Chamberlain to the Commons in 1354, "you are willing to assent
to a permanent treaty of peace, if one can be obtained? And the said
Commons answered entirely and unanimously: Yes, yes! (Oil! Oil!)"[414]

Nothing is too great or too small for Parliament to attend to; the
sovereign appeals to it, and the clergy too, and beggars also. In 1330,
the poor, the "poverail" of Greenwich, complain that alms are no longer
bestowed on them as formerly, to the great detriment, say they, of the
souls of the benefactors of the place "who are in Purgatory."[415]
Convents claim privileges that time has effaced; servants ask for their
wages; the barber of Edward II. solicits the maintenance of favours
granted by a prince he had bled and shaved for twenty-six years.[416]

And before the same gathering of men, far different quarrels are brought
forth. The king's ministers, Latymer and Neville, are impeached; his
mistress Alice Perrers hears sentence[417]; his household, personal
attendants and expenses are reformed; and from then can be foreseen a
time when, owing to the tread of centuries, the king will reign but no
longer govern. Such is almost the case even in the fourteenth century.
Parliament deposes Richard II., who fancied himself king by right
divine, and claimed, long before the Stuarts, to hold his crown, "del
doun de Dieu," as a "gift of God."[418] In the list of grievances drawn
up by the assembly to justify the deposition, figures the assertion
attributed to the king "that the laws proceeded from his lips or from
his heart, a