general consent; and therefore he
was sure the commons would not attempt nor say anything but what should
be fitting and conducive to unanimity; commanding them to meet together
and communicate for the public service.[245]

It was not only in money bills that the originating power was supposed
to reside in the commons. The course of proceedings in parliament, as
has been seen, from the commencement at least of Edward III.'s reign,
was that the commons presented petitions, which the lords, by
themselves, or with the assistance of the council, having duly
considered, the sanction of the king was notified or withheld. This was
so much according to usage, that, on one occasion, when the commons
requested the advice of the other house on a matter before them, it was
answered that the ancient custom and form of parliament had ever been
for the commons to report their own opinion to the king and lords, and
not to the contrary; and the king would have the ancient and laudable
usages of parliament maintained.[246] It is singular that in the terror
of innovation the lords did not discover how materially this usage of
parliament took off from their own legislative influence. The rule,
however, was not observed in succeeding times; bills originated
indiscriminately in either house; and indeed some acts of Henry V.,
which do not appear to be grounded on any petition, may be suspected,
from the manner of their insertion in the rolls of parliament, to have
been proposed on the king's part to the commons.[247] But there is one
manifest instance in the 18th of Henry VI., where the king requested the
commons to give their authority to such regulations[248] as his council
might provide for redressing the abuse of purveyance; to which they
assented.

If we are to choose constitutional precedents from seasons of
tranquillity rather than disturbance, which surely is the only means of
preserving justice or consistency, but little intrinsic authority can be
given to the following declaration of parliamentary law in the 11th of
Richard II.: "In this parliament (the roll says) all the lords as well
spiritual and temporal there present claimed as their liberty and
privilege, that the great matters moved in this parliament, and to be
moved in other parliaments for time to come, touching the peers of the
land, should be treated, adjudged, and debated according to the course
of parliament, and not by the civil law nor the common law of the land,