and his council, entered on the roll of parliament, and even
the statute roll, and in some respects are still part of our law.[336]
To these it seems highly probable that the commons gave no assent; and
they may be reckoned among the other infringements of their legislative
rights. It is remarkable that in the same parliament the commons, as if
apprehensive of what was in preparation, besought the king that no
petition of the clergy might be granted till he and his council should
have considered whether it would turn to the prejudice of the lords or
commons.[337]

A series of petitions from the clergy, in the twenty-fifth of Edward.
III., had not probably any real assent of the commons, though it is once
mentioned in the enacting words, when they were drawn into a
statute.[338] Indeed the petitions correspond so little with the general
sentiment of hostility towards ecclesiastical privileges manifested by
the lower house of parliament, that they would not easily have obtained
its acquiescence. The convocation of the province of Canterbury
presented several petitions in the fiftieth year of the same king, to
which they received an assenting answer; but they are not found in the
statute-book. This, however, produced the following remonstrance from
the commons at the next parliament: "Also the commons beseech their lord
the king, that no statute nor ordinance be made at the petition of the
clergy, unless by assent of your commons; and that your commons be not
bound by any constitutions which they make for their own profit without
the commons' assent. For they will not be bound by any of your statutes
or ordinances made without their assent."[339] The king evaded a direct
answer to this petition. But the province of Canterbury did not the less
present their own grievances to the king in that parliament, and two
among the statutes of the year seem to be founded upon no other
authority.[340]

In the first session of Richard II. the prelates and clergy of both
provinces are said to have presented their schedule of petitions which
appear upon the roll, and three of which are the foundation of statutes
unassented to in all probability by the commons.[341] If the clergy of
both provinces were actually present, as is here asserted, it must of
course have been as a house of parliament, and not of convocation. It
rather seems, so far as we can trust to the phraseology of records,
that the clergy sat also in a national assembly und