ined therein, they saw no way of making a treaty which
would not openly turn to the disherison of the king and his heirs, to
which they would on no account assent; and so departed for that
day."[129] A few years before they had made a similar answer to some
other propositions from Scotland.[130] It is not improbable that, in
both these cases, they acted with the concurrence and at the instigation
of the king; but the precedents, might have been remembered in other
circumstances.

[Sidenote: Right of the commons to inquire into public abuses.]

A third important acquisition of the house of commons during this reign
was the establishment of their right to investigate and chastise the
abuses of administration. In the fourteenth of Edward III. a committee
of the lords' house had been appointed to examine the accounts of
persons responsible for the receipt of the last subsidy; but it does not
appear that the commons were concerned in this.[131] The unfortunate
statute of the next year contained a similar provision, which was
annulled with the rest. Many years elapsed before the commons tried the
force of their vindictive arm. We must pass onward an entire generation
of man, and look at the parliament assembled in the fiftieth of Edward
III. Nothing memorable as to the interference of the commons in
government occurs before, unless it be their request, in the forty-fifth
of the king, that no clergyman should be made chancellor, treasurer, or
other great officer; to which the king answered that he would do what
best pleased his council.[132]

[Sidenote: Parliament of 50 E. III.]

It will be remembered by every one who has read our history that in the
latter years of Edward's life his fame was tarnished by the ascendancy
of the duke of Lancaster and Alice Perrers. The former, a man of more
ambition than his capacity seems to have warranted, even incurred the
suspicion of meditating to set aside the heir of the crown when the
Black Prince should have sunk into the grave. Whether he were wronged or
not by these conjectures, they certainly appear to have operated on
those most concerned to take alarm at them. A parliament met in April,
1376, wherein the general unpopularity of the king's administration, or
the influence of the prince of Wales, led to very remarkable
consequences.[133] After granting a subsidy, the commons, "considering
the evils of the country, through so many wars and other causes, and
that the officers now i