to that held in the eighth year of Henry IV. The commons presented
thirty-one articles, none of which the king ventured to refuse, though
pressing very severely upon his prerogative. He was to name sixteen
counsellors, by whose advice he was solely to be guided, none of them to
be dismissed without conviction of misdemeanor. The chancellor and privy
seal to pass no grants or other matter contrary to law. Any persons
about the court stirring up the king or queen's minds against their
subjects, and duly convicted thereof, to lose their offices and be
fined. The king's ordinary revenue was wholly appropriated to his
household and the payment of his debts; no grant of wardship or other
profit to be made thereout, nor any forfeiture to be pardoned. The king,
"considering the wise government of other Christian princes, and
conforming himself thereto," was to assign two days in the week for
petitions, "it being an honourable and necessary thing that his lieges,
who desired to petition him, should be heard." No judicial officer, nor
any in the revenue or household, to enjoy his place for life or term of
years. No petition to be presented to the king, by any of his household,
at times when the council were not sitting. The council to determine
nothing cognizable at common law, unless for a reasonable cause and with
consent of the judges. The statutes regulating purveyance were
affirmed--abuses of various kinds in the council and in courts of
justice enumerated and forbidden--elections of knights for counties put
under regulation. The council and officers of state were sworn to
observe the common law and all statutes, those especially just
enacted.[213]

It must strike every reader that these provisions were of themselves a
noble fabric of constitutional liberty, and hardly perhaps inferior to
the petition of right under Charles I. We cannot account for the
submission of Henry to conditions far more derogatory than ever were
imposed on Richard, because the secret politics of his reign are very
imperfectly understood. Towards its close he manifested more vigour. The
speaker, Sir Thomas Chaucer, having made the usual petition for liberty
of speech, the king answered that he might speak as others had done in
the time of his (Henry's) ancestors, and his own, but not otherwise; for
he would by no means have any innovation, but be as much at his liberty
as any of his ancestors had ever been. Some time after he sent a message
to the co