tagenets
had gone as steadily on under Henry the Fourth and his successors. The
Commons had continued their advance. Not only had the right of
self-taxation and of the initiation of laws been explicitly yielded to
them, but they had interfered with the administration of the state, had
directed the application of subsidies, and called royal ministers to
account by repeated instances of impeachment. Under the first two kings of
the House of Lancaster Parliament had been summoned almost every year.
Under Henry the Sixth an important step was made in constitutional
progress by abandoning the old custom of presenting the requests of
Parliament in the form of petitions which were subsequently moulded into
statutes by the royal Council. The statute itself in its final shape was
now presented for the royal assent and the Crown deprived of all
opportunity of modifying it. But with the reign of Edward the Fourth not
only this progress but the very action of Parliament comes almost to an
end. For the first time since the days of John not a single law which
promoted freedom or remedied the abuses of power was even proposed. The
Houses indeed were only rarely called together by Edward; they were only
twice summoned during the last thirteen years of Henry the Seventh.

[Sidenote: Parliament and the Civil War]

But this discontinuance of Parliamentary life was not due merely to the
new financial system of the Crown. The policy of the kings was aided by
the internal weakness of Parliament itself. No institution suffered more
from the civil war. During its progress the Houses had become mere
gatherings of nobles with their retainers and partizans. They were like
armed camps to which the great lords came with small armies at their
backs. When arms were prohibited the retainers of the warring barons
appeared, as in the Club Parliament of 1426, with clubs on their
shoulders. When clubs were forbidden they hid stones and balls of lead in
their clothes. Amidst scenes such as these the faith in and reverence for
Parliaments could hardly fail to die away. But the very success of the
House of York was a more fatal blow to the trust in them. It was by the
act of the Houses that the Lancastrian line had been raised to the throne.
Its title was a Parliamentary title. Its existence was in fact a
contention that the will of Parliament could override the claims of blood
in the succession to the throne. With all this the civil war dealt roughly
and