g to their advice. On the last day of the session the
commons were informed that "it had never been known in the time of his
ancestors that they should have their petitions answered before they had
done all their business in parliament, whether of granting money or any
other concern; wherefore the king will not alter the good customs and
usages of ancient times."[192]

Notwithstanding the just views these parliaments appear generally to
have entertained of their power over the public purse, that of the third
of Henry V. followed a precedent from the worst times of Richard II., by
granting the king a subsidy on wool and leather during his life.[193]
This, an historian tells us, Henry IV. had vainly laboured to
obtain;[194] but the taking of Harfleur intoxicated the English with new
dreams of conquest in France, which their good sense and constitutional
jealousy were not firm enough to resist. The continued expenses of the
war, however, prevented this grant from becoming so dangerous as it
might have been in a season of tranquillity. Henry V., like his father,
convoked parliament almost in every year of his reign.

[Sidenote: Legislative rights of the commons established.]

4. It had long been out of all question that the legislature consisted
of the king, lords, and commons; or, in stricter language, that the king
could not make or repeal statutes without the consent of parliament. But
this fundamental maxim was still frequently defeated by various acts of
evasion or violence; which, though protested against as illegal, it was
a difficult task to prevent. The king sometimes exerted a power of
suspending the observance of statutes, as in the ninth of Richard II.,
when a petition that all statutes might be confirmed is granted, with
an exception as to one passed in the last parliament, forbidding the
judges to take fees, or give counsel in cases where the king was a
party; which, "because it was too severe and needs declaration, the king
would have of no effect till it should be declared in parliament."[195]
The apprehension of the dispensing prerogative and sense of its
illegality are manifested by the wary terms wherein the commons, in one
of Richard's parliaments, "assent that the king make such sufferance
respecting the statute of provisors as shall seem reasonable to him, so
that the said statute be not repealed; and, moreover, that the commons
may disagree thereto at the next parliament, and resort to the statute;"