er
accused of illegal tallages, the frequent theme of remonstrance under
Edward, unless we may conjecture that this charge is implied in an act
(11 R. II. c. 9) which annuls all impositions on wool and leather,
without consent of parliament, _if any there be_.[182] Doubtless his
innocence in this respect was the effect of weakness; and if the
revolution of 1399 had not put an end to his newly acquired despotism,
this, like every other right of his people, would have been swept away.
A less palpable means of evading the consent of the commons was by the
extortion of loans, and harassing those who refused to pay by summonses
before the council. These loans, the frequent resource of arbitrary
sovereigns in later times, are first complained of in an early
parliament of Richard II.: and a petition is granted that no man shall
be compelled to lend the king money.[183] But how little this was
regarded we may infer from a writ directed, in 1386, to some persons in
Boston, enjoining them to assess every person who had goods and chattels
to the amount of twenty pounds, in his proportion of two hundred pounds,
which the town had promised to lend the king; and giving an assurance
that this shall be deducted from the next subsidy to be granted by
parliament. Among other extraordinary parts of this letter is a menace
of forfeiting life, limbs, and property, held out against such as should
not obey these commissioners.[184] After his triumph over the popular
party towards the end of his reign, he obtained large sums in this way.

Under the Lancastrian kings there is much less appearance of raising
money in an unparliamentary course. Henry IV. obtained an aid from a
great council in the year 1400; but they did not pretend to charge any
besides themselves; though it seems that some towns afterwards gave the
king a contribution.[185] A few years afterwards he directs the sheriffs
to call on the richest men in their counties to advance the money voted
by parliament. This, if any compulsion was threatened, is an instance of
overstrained prerogative, though consonant to the practice of the late
reign.[186] There is, however, an instance of very arbitrary conduct
with respect to a grant of money in the minority of Henry VI. A subsidy
had been granted by parliament upon goods imported under certain
restrictions in favour of the merchants, with a provision that, if these
conditions be not observed on the king's part, then the grant should be
v