Edward IV: October 1472

1472 October

Introduction 1472

Westminster

6 October 1472 - 14 March 1475

(PRO C 65/109-111. RP , vi.3-164. SR , ii. 431-51)

This parliament now occupies three rolls. Roll 1, C 65/109, is a roll of thirty-eight membranes, each approximately 280mm in width, sewn together in chancery style and numbered from bottom to top. A later hand has noted 'annus 13 E 4' at the head of membrane 15. The text, written by several scribes, occupies the rectos of the membranes, though the main heading of the roll is on the dorse of membrane 38. Also on the dorse are later notes where some of the membranes are joined, 'parl 12 Ed 4 apud Westm' or 'parl 12 E 4', and a later hand has noted at the foot of membrane 1, 'Rotulus parliamenti tenti apud Westmonast[erium] ... die martis sexto die Octobris anno ... et per universas prorogatas continuati ... diem Octobris anno ...'. The condition of the roll is generally good, though membrane 1 is slightly damaged, there is a tear at the right-hand side near the foot of membrane 11, and membranes 28 and 38 are stained with gallic acid making the text illegible in places. The lower half of membrane 37 is blank, and only the top 180mm of membrane 16 has been written on. A space of 180mm has been left blank between item numbers 6 and 7 on membrane 37, and ten blank lines, a space of 80mm, have been left in the first paragraph of the roll for the bishop of Rochester's text and its development. The arabic item numbering is of a later date.

Roll 2, C 65/110, is a roll of twenty-four membranes, each approximately 290mm in width, sewn together in chancery style. The membrane numbers used here run from the bottom up, but there is also a descending sequence. The text, written by several scribes, occupies the rectos of the membranes, although the main heading of the roll is on the dorse at the head of membrane 24, and another heading appears on the dorse of membrane 1, 'Rotulus parliamenti per prorogationem tenti apud Westmonasterium sexto die Octobris anno 13 regni regis E. 4 et per diversas prorogationes usque sextum diem Junii anno 14 ejusdem regis continuati'. Also on the dorse of membrane 1 are the notes 'anno 13 E. 4', and 'parliamentum anno 13 E. 4'. Later notes where some of the membranes are joined also appear on the dorse: 'parliam' 13 H. 4 [ sic ]', and 'anno xiij ^o '. The condition of the roll is generally good. Membrane 5 has only six lines of text at its head, with the rest of the membrane blank. The marginal notes are a mixture of the contemporary and later, but all the marginal headings of the provisos to the act of resumption are later. The arabic item numbering is of a later date. A schedule measuring some 300mm in width and 150mm in length has been sewn to the left-hand side of the roll near the foot of membrane 7 authorising the insertion of the words 'release' and 'releases' in the proviso for the mayor, sheriffs and burgesses of Nottingham; there is a hole near the foot where a seal was once attached. When the roll was checked for accuracy two places requiring correction were marked with a cross in the margin, and these have been noted in the text file.

Roll 3, C 65/111, is a roll of thirty-seven membranes, each approximately 290mm in width, sewn together in chancery style and numbered from the bottom up. The text, written by several scribes, occupies the rectos of the membranes, but the main contemporary heading of the roll is on the dorse at the head of membrane 37, and a later hand has also noted there 'Parl' de annis 12-13-14 Ed. 4'. Later notes 'Parl. 14 E. 4' occur at the join of membranes. The condition of the roll is generally good, though the foot of membrane 1 is stained with gallic acid. The lower halves of membranes 21, 14, 12 and 8 are blank. The arabic item numbering is of a later date. As in roll 2, when the roll was checked for accuracy some places requiring correction were marked in the margin and these have been noted in the text file. Membranes 13 and 12 have been unstitched and then put back together, perhaps to facilitate the scrubbing out and rewriting of the first five and a half lines of membrane 12.

Because the membranes in each roll are numbered in a separate sequence in a later hand (as are the items) it is impossible to be sure at what stage the present rolls were created and whether any material has been lost. The last membrane of roll 1 is damaged, but it does not look as if there are any stitch marks there, suggesting that it always was the final membrane in this particular roll. It covers the first two sessions of the parliament, beginning on 6 October 1472 and 8 February 1473, but includes no common petitions. Roll 2 begins with a memorandum of the resumption of parliament on 6 October 1473, but a double row of needle holes at the head of the membrane suggests that there was once material before it. As well as the October 1473 session, the roll covers the sessions of January 1474 (from which no business is recorded), May 1474 and the beginning of the June 1474 session. The last membrane of roll 2 has obviously been the outer membrane for some time, but there are stitch marks at the bottom and the writing on this last membrane continues to its very end. The probability is that it was once part of a longer roll, but it is impossible to tell whether material has been lost or whether it simply became detached from the present roll 3. That also has needle holes at the top of the first membrane and continues with the business of the June 1474 session without any form of heading. If anything has been lost between the rolls it will therefore be material from the 6 June 1474 session. Roll 3 also includes the January 1475 sessions and its dissolution. It ends, as was customary, with the common petitions. These are in two blocks, the first undated and the second associated with the final session. There are no stitch holes at the end of the last roll, so although the final entry comes to the very end of the membrane it is probably the true end of the roll. If anything is now missing it will be common petitions from that last session.

Parliament was summoned by writs of 19 August 1472 to meet at Westminster on 6 October. The names of 282 members of the commons are known including, for the first time, a representative from Much Wenlock. The missing names are those for Cornwall and its boroughs. The parliament sat for forty-four weeks spread across two and a half years - a record not to be broken until the reformation parliament. Wedgwood identifies six members of the commons who died in the course of it. (fn. int1472-1) None of them is known to have been replaced. Three members are known for Hastings, which suggests that one was replaced for some reason. As the Crowland Chronicler points out, there were three chancellors in the course of the parliament. The first, the bishop of Bath and Wells, as he notes, did nothing except through his pupil John Alcock. (fn. int1472-2) It was Alcock, the bishop of Rochester, who announced the reason for summoning parliament. Nothing is said of his sermon on the roll, but the commons were later to speak warmly of the way in which he had relayed the king's concern to uphold the law (roll 1 item10).

The commons chose their speaker, William Allington, on Wednesday 7 October and presented him to the king two days later. Allington's first certain parliamentary experience was in 1467-8, although he may also have sat for Edward IV's two earlier parliaments, for which the Cambridgeshire returns do not survive. (fn. int1472-3) His job, as must already have been apparent, would be to steer through financial provision for the war against France which Edward had promised in 1467 but which had never happened. The record of his presentation to the king is followed immediately on the roll by business completed on the last day of the session: 30 November. The first item was the grant of 13,000 archers to be sent against the king's 'auncien and mortall ennemyes' (item 8). Their wages for a year would amount to £118, 625. Henry VI had been made a similar grant of archers in 1453, but where local communities had then been made responsible for recruiting and paying them, the arrangement in 1472 was that recruitment should be organised centrally and the men paid from a levy of one tenth of individuals' annual income from land, rents, annuities, offices, corrodies and pensions, but not spiritualities. The decision to adopt an income tax for the first time since 1450 was characteristic of the king's willingness to experiment with sources of revenue, including his non-parliamentary levy of 1464 and, later, his resort to benevolences. (fn. int1472-4) The commons were consistently more conservative. They had not liked the 'extra' £6000 Edward had tried to raise in 1463, and soon demonstrated reservations about this latest expedient.

For the purposes of calculating liability the year was deemed to begin on 1 January 1473 and the money was due on 3 February. Commissioners were appointed in each county to oversee its collection. They were to choose the actual collectors, who were in turn responsible for delivering the money raised to designated centres where it could be safely kept until the commons authorised its payment. That, it was made explicit, would not be until the order had been given to muster troops for the invasion of France. If that had not happened by Michaelmas 1474 the grant would be revoked and the money returned to the taxpayers, or to their executors if they had died in the interim. Obviously the commons still remembered Edward's failure to spend parliamentary taxation in the agreed way in the 1460s. They were also anxious lest the nature of the grant set a precedent for the future, and were insistent that the information gathered by the commissioners as the basis for estimating individual liability should not fall into the hands of the exchequer. The lords, who had been explicitly exempted from the commons' grant, agreed a similar grant from their own landed revenues, to be stored at St Paul's.

The primacy given to the grant of the archers and their funding on the roll makes it clear that, for Edward, this was the main purpose of the session. But the structure of the roll also emphasises the close linkage, already apparent in 1468, between the successful pursuit of war (one facet of peace outwards) and the preservation of domestic law and order (peace inwards). The link, which was a late-medieval commonplace, was to be made repeatedly in the course of the parliament and had almost certainly been the theme of Alcock's missing sermon. On the same day as the commons granted the income tax, their speaker made what the compiler of the roll characterised as an important announcement by way of a request (item 10). Allington began with a well-crafted compliment to the king, empowered by God to lead his people out of the dangers of war into the 'moost desired estate of peas'. But peace cannot last without the proper execution of the law, as the chancellor had reminded the parliament of 1467-8, and the speaker went on to paint a gloomy picture of the prevalence of violence and crime, even within the purlieus of parliament itself. The solution was the proper enforcement of the laws in general, but he pointed the finger particularly at the destructive effects of maintenance and demanded that the king adopt the methods of his progenitor Edward III, the hero of the speaker's account, to deal with the problem. (fn. int1472-5)

This sequence of entries ends with the prorogation of parliament on 30 November (item 11). Alcock, speaking on behalf of the king, reasserted the link between war and law, observing that the defence of the realm and the maintenance of sound and substantial governance could not be settled before Christmas. Parliament was to reassemble on 8 February: five days after payment of the income tax was due.

The first five membranes of the roll offer a view of the first session that is in one important respect misleading. Peace at home and abroad was not the only business of the session. A wide range of other business is collected in a second sequence, occupying membranes 33-16. But selling the French war to the commons, and then settling how its costs were to be met, must have dominated the session. The Crowland Chronicler, not usually very interested in parliaments, refers to the many well-turned speeches needed to achieve agreement, and reveals that outside speakers were invited to address parliament to this end. (fn. int1472-6) The parliament roll conveys nothing of this, but the grant of an aid does begin with a reference to 'a declaration in writyng, delyvered amonge us youre seid commens' urging support for the king's venture. This is generally taken to be the text surviving in the Canterbury archives (appendix item 1), although its editor dated it to the summer 1474 session. (fn. int1472-7) David Morgan has plausibly suggested that a document among the Westminster muniments, setting out a programme of legal reform, also relates to this parliament, if not necessarily to this session (appendix item 2). A third text that obviously reflects parliamentary thinking about the linkage of war and law is the charge given by the commissioners responsible for assessing the aid to the local men who actually had to collect the money (appendix item 3).

The remaining business of the session can be grouped broadly into three categories. This section of the roll is headed by items of royal business. Parliament ratified the creation (in summer 1471) of the king's son Edward as prince of Wales, duke of Cornwall and earl of Chester and recorded a series of provisos protecting the interests of other members of the royal family and a number of royal household men (items 12-14). Two more provisos were to be added in the next session (items 49-50). In the same category, although not recorded on the roll, should be placed the creation of Louis de Bruges, seigneur de la Gruythuse, the king's host for part of his exile, as earl of Winchester before the lords on 13 October. This was the feast of St Edward, an important occasion in the royal liturgical calendar, and a full account of the day's events survives. At about ten in the morning the king came into the parliament chamber in his parliament robes and a cap of maintenance and sat enthroned, with his lords before him. Allington, on behalf of the commons, delivered a speech praising the constancy of the queen during her husband's exile, the loyalty of those who had faced exile with him and the hardships suffered by those who remained behind. This was the prelude to fulsome thanks to de la Gruythuse for sheltering the king. The speaker ended by requesting that all those concerned should be commended, which in the record of de la Gruythuse's creation is elaborated as a request by the commons that he be made earl. The creation itself followed, before the king and his family led the procession to the abbey to offer at St Edward's shrine. (fn. int1472-8)

Several attainders were reversed. The most eminent beneficiary was Henry Percy, whose father had been attainted in 1461 after his death on the Lancastrian side at Towton. Henry junior had been working his way back into the king's grace, aided by Edward IV's desire to clip the wings of Richard Neville, from the autumn of 1469. He had been accepted as the king's liege in October that year, and in March 1470 was granted his father's land. This was clearly intended, and was seen, as the prelude to the restoration of the earldom itself, although in the parliamentary reversal of his attainder Henry is still punctiliously described only as Henry Percy, knight, eldest son of Henry Percy, late earl of Northumberland (item 15).

Eighteen further reversals of attainder follow. Edward's victorious return, and the death of Henry VI and his son, meant that even committed Lancastrians like John Morton had reconsidered their future. But many of the men concerned, like Robert Bollying, pardoned in June 1463 (item 19), had started working their way back into favour well before the Readeption and its collapse. The growing number of reversals must also owe something to the king's readiness to rule a line under the past as well as to the motivation of the beneficiaries themselves. It is clear from the wording of the bills that as the number of reversals grew, the process was becoming increasingly routine. The terms and conditions of reversal had been standardised by the end of this parliament. The opening of each bill, which consisted of the individual's petition for grace, was inevitably less formulaic. Even there, however, one can see turns of phrase adopted by several petitioners (or their scribes), notably the claim that the petitioner, 'is not of power, nor may do to youre highnes so good service as his hert wold'. What was still not standardised, however, was enrolment. At least one successful petition from this parliament was not enrolled (appendix item 6). There is no obvious explanation why some were enrolled and others not. In this session two of the nineteen enrolled reversals benefited members of the commons (William Grimsby and William Tailboys) and a third was in favour of John Morton, now master of the rolls and one of the receivers of petitions. Apart from Henry Percy, who had been summoned in anticipation of his restoration, none of the other beneficiaries was present and some were relatively insignificant figures. Perhaps with a new clerk in office - John Gunthorpe, the dean of Wells - we are seeing the beginning of a move towards enrolling all bills.

The first session also addressed a number of legal disputes. In part this reflects the unquiet years of 1469-71, when a number of disputes had flared into violence. The most famous of these, the Talbot/Berkeley dispute which produced the last private battle on English soil, the battle of Nibley Green in March 1470, was brought before parliament for resolution (item 23). Both parties, Margaret, the widow of Thomas viscount Lisle, slain at Nibley, and William, Lord Berkeley and his wife Joan, petitioned for the ratification of a proposed settlement, which did indeed damp down the dispute, although there were to be later outbreaks of conflict. The unrest in Cornwall to which Jane Glyn's petition (item 38) is testimony had also come to a head in those years, culminating in an attack on the Glyn manor of Morval which the petition explicitly locates within the period of Edward's exile. But the king's return had not calmed the dispute, and John Glyn's murder, followed by the dismemberment of his body, had occurred as recently as 29 August 1472. The murderous attack on Richard Williamson detailed in the petition of his widow (item 39) had taken place at Hemingborough in the East Riding less than a week before parliament assembled, and the petition went on to detail subsequent developments, including efforts by the murderers' father to get his sons into the service of the duke of Gloucester. It would have been difficult, although not quite impossible, for Katherine Williamson to meet the 15 October deadline for the submission of petitions and her petition may have been a late addition to the business under consideration, taken up by the commons because it spoke to their current preoccupation with law and order. The importance of maintenance to the criminals in this case, and Gloucester's refusal of his support when he discovered what they had done, provided a case study not only of what the commons saw as the major threat to the preservation of the law but also of their preferred solution.

Parliament reassembled for the second session on 8 February 1473. The order of entries on the roll is the same as in the previous session. The resumption of parliament, a grant of further taxation on the last day of the session (8 April) and the prorogation of parliament, with an amendment to the previous grant of income tax as a sort of pendant, form one sequence, occupying membranes 15-13. The rest of the business of the session follows in a second sequence, filling membranes 12-1. Almost every item in that second sequence is said in its preamble to have been presented in the present parliament 'on the 8 February'. This is not always literally true; two reversals of attainder, for instance, were to be effective from the beginning of April, which suggest resolution later in the session (items 48, 52). The wording was simply the clerk's way of linking business unambiguously to a particular session. The same formula was used in later sessions of the parliament, but was then abandoned in subsequent, briefer parliaments.

On the last day of the session, 8 April 1473, the commons' speaker came before the king to offer a tenth and fifteenth, with the now-standard deduction of £6000, to be paid on the following 24 June. It was explained that the grant was necessary because, as at 6 April (when the indenture was evidently drawn up) it was still not clear how much the income tax (due to be collected by the beginning of the previous February) had yielded. The commons stipulated that this money, too, was to be kept safely until they authorised its release. Unlike the income tax, which was not to be paid over until the army had mustered, this was to be paid over when the mustering process began. But the commons were extremely careful to close down any possibility that the money might be handed over on the promise of a muster that then failed to take place. The money would not be delivered until a fortnight after the king had indented with his lords and other captains for their service and the appointed day for the musters had been proclaimed. If the army failed to muster after the payment had been made the cash was to be repaid.

It is obvious that Edward was pressing for control of the money sooner rather than later. Buying equipment for the army could not wait on its muster, and the income tax was in any case only meant to cover the wages of the archers. The commons' grudging compromise was not enough, and it was the lords who came to his rescue. They agreed that the tenth part of their landed incomes, granted by them in the previous session and kept separately from the rest of the money, could be paid over to the treasurer, apparently with immediate effect since no delivery date is stipulated (item 44). (fn. int1472-9) The assertion in the lords' grant of why the money was so important to the war effort emphasises how resolutely the commons must have resisted the king's wishes. The 8 April indenture between king and commons opens conventionally with praise for the king's 'grete contynued zele, love and tendernes' towards the defence of the realm and for his willingness to risk himself in battle, 'as right largely on youre behalf afore this tyme in this youre seid parlement hath been opened and shewed unto us'. But the commons were evidently deeply mistrustful of the king's intentions, and resentful of the financial burden. There was resentment outside parliament too. On 26 March John Paston III wrote to his elder brother, 'I prey God send yow the Holy Gost amonge yow in the parlement howse, and rather the devyll, we sey, then ye shold grante eny more taskys'. (fn. int1472-10) Edward apparently recognised that an olive-branch was called for, and in his answer to the commons' grant of a tenth and fifteenth offered to defer its collection until Michaelmas, unless 'pressing and necessary causes' made it essential to collect it sooner. He could afford to do so because the diplomatic preparations for war had stalled. The crucial support of Brittany and Burgundy was faltering, and on 22 March 1473 Edward had signed a truce with France, to last until 1 April 1474 - something not announced in parliament. (fn. int1472-11)

The tension between king and commons must have been exacerbated by difficulties in collecting the income tax. The money had been due on 3 February, but its collection, requiring, as it did, a whole new administrative structure, was evidently running into the sand. In the letter cited above, written seven weeks after payment was due, John Paston mentioned a Norfolk collector who was still trying to get out of the appointment on the grounds that he held no land in the county and asked for his brother's help in rescuing him from 'that thanklesse offyce, for I promyse yow it encomberthe hym'. In reply John II sent assurances that the man had indeed been rescued but said nothing on the matter of further taxation. (fn. int1472-12)

The impossibility of estimating what money had been raised must have infuriated the king. The commons' reaction was probably more ambivalent. They had disliked the novelty of the grant from the outset, seeing it as the thin end of a wedge that could be used to open up new forms of taxation, and they may have regarded the difficulties with some satisfaction. How, for instance, could one distrain an individual for payment of a tenth of the proceeds of an office or annuity if that was their only livelihood in the county concerned? On 20 February 1473 the Middlesex collectors submitted a list of such people, including three serjeants at arms and the keeper of the Tower of London, to the exchequer. (fn. int1472-13) The commons themselves identified another problem. Early in the second session they presented a petition pointing out that designated custodians of the money were refusing to accept it (appendix item 4). They could afford to do so because the act established no penalties for such a refusal, and the commons demanded that from 1 March the penalty for such behaviour should be forfeiture to the crown of the value of the sum refused. Although the petition does not say so, this was the penalty set out in the act for collectors refusing to collect the money or pay it over. The king reserved judgement and the penalty was not added to later recensions of the act. But the commons did build a version of it into their grant of a tenth and fifteenth, which specified that designated custodians refusing the money collected should pay £100 and in addition make fine to the king.

The other business was similar to that of the previous session, and in some cases a direct response to it. Thomas Trethewy and others appealed against a bill put in by John Vivian in the previous session accusing them of orchestrating an attack on him (item 58). Vivian's bill had been agreed and Trethewy and the rest were subsequently found guilty by default when they failed to appear in king's bench. They now successfully sought to have Vivian's bill voided and it now exists only as a schedule to the Trethewy bill, not as an entry on the roll for the first sesssion, when it had been agreed. (fn. int1472-14) Thomas Farnell, alias Forster, who had featured in the previous session as the father and confederate of the murderers of Richard Williamson, petitioned for a speedy release on bail on the grounds of his old age (item 56). Two more royal servants sought protection for grants threatened by the endowment of the prince of Wales (items 49-50).

Among the 'new' business were more petitions for attainder to be lifted. Among them was the petition of Humphrey Dacre, who, along with his elder brother Ranulph, lord Dacre had been attainted in 1461 (item 45). Ranulph had died childless and the lifting of the attainders freed Humphrey, who had been admitted to grace in the second year of the reign, to inherit the family land with effect from 4 April 1473. A series of provisos established the division of the inheritance between Humphrey, as heir male of his father Thomas, and the heir general Joan Dacre, the daughter of the elder brother of Ranulph and Humphrey, who had predeceased his father. Joan was the wife of the king's favoured associate Richard Fenys, who had been recognised as lord Dacre in her right.

Two items addressed lawlessness during Edward IV's exile. John Ashton sought redress for an attack on his manor house in November 1470 (item 57). The duke of Norfolk, keeper of the marshalsea, petitioned for a pardon in respect of a mass escape from the prison on 1 October 1470 (item 55). The second session also returned to the matter of how repayments to the Staplers were to be made (item 59). The king's debt to them now stood at £21,000, a significant reduction over the decade since 1463, but they had taken on further responsibilities, including the fees of the customs officials of London and a payment of £2,700 to redeem the crown jewels. The arrangements made in 1467, which were to run for eight and a half years, were, with minor changes, renewed for sixteen years from 8 April 1472. The agreement seems also to have served as the occasion to deal with a wide range of other issues affecting trade through Calais, ranging from a ban on repacking wool between its export from England and its sale in Calais, to the problems consequent on receiving payment in foreign coin. It ends with a series of provisos for various beneficiaries, one of whom (John Yonge esquire) refered to the act as 'this acte of resumption' and secured protection for grants under the great seal, the seal of the duchy of Lancaster and the seal kept by the treasurer of Calais. It had already been flagged up that the business of the parliament was to include an act of resumption and those affected were beginning to prepare their petitions. The act itself is enrolled among the business of the third session, but one petition for exemption (from Lady Roos) is known to have been presented as early as 14 March 1473. (fn. int1472-15) Yonge was evidently also ahead of the field. His bill was perhaps designed to be multi-purpose and was attached to the Calais bill at the clerk's discretion. No proviso for him is attached to the act of resumption itself - although there is one for his knightly namesake.

Parliament was prorogued on 8 April, to reassemble on 6 October, although provision was made for an earlier recall if it was thought necessary (item 43). The bishop of Bath and Wells, Robert Stillington, presided over the prorogation: his one recorded contribution to events. It was not only the impending war with France and its financing that led Edward to keep parliament in being. The other issue in the background was the dispute between the king's brothers over the Neville inheritance. Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, who had died at the battle of Barnet, left two daughters as coheirs to his great inheritance. The eldest, Isabel, was already married to George, duke of Clarence, who had reconsidered his allegiance and rejoined his brother in 1471. The second, Anne, who had been married to Edward of Lancaster as part of the 1470 alliance between the Yorkist rebels and the Lancastrian exiles, subsequently married Richard, duke of Gloucester. The brothers' conflict over the division of the inheritance threatened to destabilise politics at just the time Edward was seeking peace inward as a prelude to his war with France. (fn. int1472-16) The one thing upon which the brothers were agreed was that they wished to hold their share of the inheritance by marriage and not by royal grant. The only trace of the dispute in the first two sessions of parliament is thus the absence of an act of attainder of the rebels of 1469-71. If Warwick had to remain unattainted, to allow his lands to pass by inheritance to his daughters, it would hardly be appropriate to attaint his followers, particularly as many had by now entered the service of Clarence or Gloucester.

During the recess the king demonstrated his commitment to law and order as the commons would have wished, by going on a progress through the Midlands and the Welsh borders. Allington was among those who accompanied him, not qua speaker but as one of the councillors of the prince of Wales appointed the previous February and, as a consequence of that appointment, JP for the border counties of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire. (fn. int1472-17)

Parliament reassembled, as planned, on 6 October 1473. The occasion was presumably presided over by the bishop of Durham, Laurence Booth, who had replaced Stillington as chancellor in July, although his presence is not recorded in the brief note of parliament's resumption that begins the second roll. The note adds that the session, the parliament's third, continued until 13 December - confirmation that the entry for the session was made retrospectively. The enrolled material for the session includes no mention of the war or its finances, although the first item of business, the confirmation of the liberties of the Hanse (item 2), was designed to ensure their support in any conflict.

Relations between English merchants and the Hanse had remained strained in recent years, in spite of Burgundian attempts to broker a settlement. Although Hanseatic ships had been part of the fleet that brought Edward IV back to England in the spring of 1471, Edward did not immediately renew their liberties and Hanseatic privateers continued to prey on English shipping. Although in 1472, as part of the preparations for war, diplomatic feelers began to be put out towards the Hanse, it was not until July 1473 that serious negotiations between England and the Hanse began at Utrecht. The parliamentary bill, phrased as a royal statement, was the first fruits of that process. It renounced any retribution for actions committed against English merchants before 19 September 1473 and confirmed the Hanse's privileges, although it was made clear that reciprocal treatment was expected for English merchants. The necessary letters patent, warranted by parliament, were written by Morton, the master of the rolls, on 26 December. (fn. int1472-18)

The settlement with the Hanse is followed on the roll by two private petitions. The first was for the reversal of the attainder of the erstwhile Lancastrian chief justice and polemicist Sir John Fortescue (item 4). The reversal was back-dated to 3 April which suggests that it was a piece of unfinished business from the previous session. The second was a request, sponsored by the commons, for royal intervention in a land dispute on behalf of William Shetford (item 5). The bill was agreed, and handed on to the bishop of Durham with a note that he was to take the necessary action. (fn. int1472-19) The only other recorded business of this session was an act of resumption, which occupies membranes 20-4 of the roll. The act, which was to take effect from 21 December 1473, embraced all the crown estate as it had stood on the day of Edward's accession, plus the duchy of Lancaster and the land held by Richard duke of York at his death. Also included were all royal grants of land forfeited as a result of attainder since the beginning of the reign. This was a very wide-ranging formulation and it necessitated a greater than usual number of general provisos, including one for those former rebels who had subsequently been restored (except for the duke of Somerset).

As usual, Edward reserved the right to make individual exemptions during the lifetime of the parliament. This meant in practice that bills were being accepted beyond the point at which the act was meant to take effect. A bill for William Brent was delivered by Richard Fowler as late as 23 October 1474. (fn. int1472-20) Unfortunately very few of the surviving original bills have annotations beyond the king's sign manual and a note of enrolment. One exception is the bill of William Notyngham which carries the rather despairing endorsement 'yeven w ^t oder of every sorte'. (fn. int1472-21) The longer time-scale for receipt of petitions may explain why the arrangement of provisos by the status of the beneficiary breaks down markedly by the end of the listing. It did not, though, mean that more provisos were accepted. The act had fewer provisos than either of the two previous acts (221 as against 288 and 281) and although the number of multiple provisos means that this is not the same as the number of beneficiaries the drop remains striking. (fn. int1472-22) It gives some support to the Crowland chronicler's (exaggerated) belief that this act of resumption was particularly aggressive. (fn. int1472-23)

As had been the case in 1467, the act's primary purpose was to demonstrate Edward's own commitment to good housekeeping at a time when he was making heavy demands on his subjects. Its preamble notes that it was for the 'commen wele, defense, suertie and welfare' of the realm as well as for the king's prosperity (item 6). But it was also used to put pressure on Clarence, who did not receive an exemption, to reach agreement with Gloucester over the Warwick inheritance, although settlement was not to be reached until the following year.

A novel feature of the act was its attempt to deal simultaneously with the over-burdening of the crown lands with assignments. It was standard exchequer practice to make payments not in cash but by charging them against anticipated revenue, to be paid at source by the collectors of the money in question. The assignment of more charges against a source of revenue than could be met was a perennial problem, generating considerable ill-will among crown debtors unable to secure payment but also draining the revenue the king himself would receive. The development of the chamber as a financial agency under the Yorkist kings, which saw the issues of much of the crown land, as well as prerogative revenues, paid directly into the chamber, allowed more of the king's own expenditure to be met in cash. But assignments remained a major element in the royal financial system.

Edward proposed that all assignments charged against the principality of Wales, the duchies of Lancaster and York, and the earldom of March before 1 December 1470 should be notified to the exchequer before Easter 1475. Each debtor, at the crown's expense, would receive letters patent granting payment of one twentieth of the money due in each of the following twenty years (item 7). In practice this was a distinct act, as the first schedule attached to the bill acknowledged, but by bundling the measure up with the act of resumption, it could be presented as a further exercise in good housekeeping. The measure would free up more of the crown's landed income, facilitating Edward's earlier promise to live of his own. The holders of assignments would, one assumes, have been less enthusiastic. However problematic securing payment might be, spreading it over twenty years was hardly an attractive alternative. But it is difficult to gauge how many people were affected and hence how much difference the act made. The next reference to the plan was made on 1 March 1475, when the commons reported that in some parts of the country the proclamations notifying assignees of the arrangements had not been made and that in any case the exchequer was too busy to deal with it. They petitioned that assignees should be given until 26 May to contact the exchequer (roll 3 item 56). Perhaps the act's main function was to put down a marker to the exchequer that assignments should be made in future on revenues not earmarked for the chamber, notably the customs. Indeed, the choice of 1 December 1470 as the cut-off date might imply that such a policy was already in force in Edward's second reign.

The third session was prorogued by the bishop of Durham on 13 December, to allow everyone to go home for Christmas. Parliament resumed on 20 January 1474 and remained in being until 1 February. No business is attributed to this session on the roll and in announcing its prorogation until 9 May (item18) the bishop of Durham felt it necessary to remind those present of the importance of what they were about and reassert the king's commitment to war. He then offered a list of reasons why they were not remaining in session to get on with it. The king had sent ambassadors to the duke of Burgundy to explore his views and they were unlikely to return before Easter. This was a polite way of saying that the duke, the essential ally in the planned invasion of France, was still dragging his feet and Edward wanted to find out what was going on. There was plague about, including within the royal household itself. The king was conscious of the expense to which the parliament was putting those attending. There had been unrest throughout the realm in the past year because the attendance of the justices on parliament had meant that they could not go on circuit at the usual times, holding up the administration of justice. The piling up of excuses has a distinctly defensive air.

Parliament reassembled, as planned, on 9 May 1474 (item 19). It was to be prorogued again, briefly this time, on Saturday 28 May to allow the celebration of Whitsun (Sunday 29 May), resuming on 6 June. The prorogation was announced by the bishop of Lincoln, Thomas Rotherham, who had taken over as chancellor the previous day. Booth had had enough. The Crowland Chronicler thought him worn out by the slog of coping with the complexities of the job, by which the author meant parliament rather than the demands of the office as a whole. (fn. int1472-24)

There are three items of business from the May session on the roll. On the first day of the session the king amended the agreement reached with the Staplers on 8 February 1473 to give higher priority to the payment of the crown's law officers (item 25). The commons sponsored a petition from Henry Newton, serjeant at mace of Robert Billesdon, sheriff of London, concerning the escape from custody of Thomas Bishop (item 26). But the main business of the session, which was given priority on the roll, was the legitimation of an essential element in the settlement between Clarence and Gloucester over the Warwick inheritance (item 20). This was the effective disinheritance of Warwick's widow Anne, who had brought him the Beauchamp and Despenser estates to add to his Neville patrimony. Most of the Neville lands had already been given to Gloucester. Now the Countess Anne's inheritance was to be divided between the brothers, in right of their wives, as if the countess were dead. It was a shabby transaction, and the first of a series of episodes in which Edward was to use parliament to validate his interference in property descent. This was one aspect of his use of parliament as the appropriate arena in which to record the settlement of disputes or the transmission of land - a role that was to be further developed by Henry VII. It was not that parliament in any sense 'made' the settlement, but it was clearly thought to confer additional authority upon it, not least because it meant that the settlement could not be unpicked without bringing the issue back to parliament.

Just such a settlement was on the agenda when parliament resumed after Whitsun. The order of enrolled business from this session is unusual, and not only because it is now split across two rolls. The reassembly of parliament is the penultimate item on the second roll, followed by a single item of business - the annulment of the attainder of Thomas Danyell (item 29) - from the new session. The annulment was to be effective from 12 July, which suggests that it was finalised late in the session. But regardless of its date, individual petitions do not normally take pride of place in the enrolment of a session. The first item on the third roll could be seen as an item of royal business. It records the settlement to be made on the planned marriage between the Bonville heiress, the stepdaughter of William, Lord Hastings, and the queen's eldest son by her first marriage, Thomas Grey. This is followed immediately by the reversal of two further attainders (items 4-5), including that of John Florie, one of the men threatened with attainder in 1463 if he did not surrender himself to king's bench. He had not surrendered, and the attainder had taken effect without further parliamentary process. Now it was reversed in favour of his nephew and heir William Basing. This group of individual petitions ends with a bill put in by the executors of the London grocer William Haddon (item 6).

Together these items, in various hands, occupy the first three membranes of the roll. Only then is the main business of the session addressed: the question of war finance. This starts a new membrane [34] and the first word is slightly ornamented, to emphasise that this is a major, and self-contained, element within the roll. The business is dated to the last day of the session, 18 July. By then prospects for the planned expedition had improved, but it had also become obvious just how much of the cost remained unmet. The commons responded with a revision, and an extension, of their existing grants. Their speaker, William Allington, prefaced his account of the new arrangements with a rehearsal of the story so far, which offers some information not otherwise on the rolls, most notably that the 1472 income tax had yielded a partial return of £31,410 14s 1d halfpenny. (fn. int1472-25) Allington's narrative, or the clerk's record, stumbles over detail at times. He has the second parliament session resuming on 8 January 1473, rather than 8 February, and claims that it was on that day that the yield so far was revealed and the commons agreed to make it up with the grant of a fifteenth and tenth. According to the roll, the grant was made on the last day of the session, 8 April, and the yield of the income tax was still unknown two days earlier - although it was presumably obvious that it was not coming up to expectations.

Allington's narrative brings the account up to date with the information that the king had reported that the expedition would not be able to leave before Michaelmas 1474 (the deadline if the money so far collected was not to be paid back to the taxpayers). The commons had accordingly granted him an extension until 24 June 1476. The tenth and fifteenth granted in April 1473, and due to be collected the following Michaelmas, had not in fact been collected and was now voided and replaced with a new grant of a tenth and fifteenth (with the usual rebate of £6000) payable on 11 November 1474. This was again to be kept safely with the money raised from the income tax, although this time the commons did not spell out the conditions under which it was to be paid over.

It was recognised that the partial yield of the income tax and the new tenth and fifteenth together would far from meet the cost of the 13,000 archers. Part of the problem was that some regions and towns had not contributed at all to the income tax. The defaulters included regions such as Cheshire and Durham which were not normally charged with parliamentary taxation, and the city of Lincoln, which was evidently relying on its exemption from tenths and fifteenths. It was agreed that the regions which had not contributed needed to find 590 archers (the equivalent of £5,383 15s in wages). They were charged with finding the men themselves and funding them with a tax on goods. Cheshire was allotted 60 archers and in August 1474 the prince's council levied a mise to meet the cost. (fn. int1472-26) Even that still left a significant short fall, and the commons accepted responsibility for the remaining £51,147 4s 7d three farthings. This was to be collected nationwide from places usually liable for lay subsidies. It was to be assessed on goods and chattels and the collectors were ordered to levy it particularly on those who had little land, and had therefore escaped lightly in the 1472 income tax, and those (mainly wealthy townspeople) who usually escaped lightly in the assessment of lay subsidies. This attempt to spread the misery was laudable, but it placed a major burden on the collectors and was to be rethought in the next parliamentary session.

Parliament met again, for what was to be the last session, on 23 January 1475. There was a great deal of business to get through and the structure of the roll is quite complex as a result. The record of parliament's reassembly follows immediately from the prorogation and flows without a break into the continuing issue of war finance and three other matters of royal concern: the enfeofment of land for the performance of the king's will (items 11-14); the settlement with the Hanse (item 15) and the final resolution of the dispute over the Warwick inheritance. On the roll all these items are phrased as royal assertions, rather than as petitions, and therefore lack any reply. The extant original bills are, however, in some cases, endorsed le roy le voet as well as being validated by the royal sign manual. This is true of the enfeofment of land to the use of the king's will, the grant to the Hanse and the revised grant of land to Clarence (item 20), although in the first case the assent may relate specifically to the proviso on the queen's behalf, which the bill shows to be an addition to the original text. (fn. int1472-27)

Membrane 24 begins with the confirmation of a recovery by the duke of Gloucester (item 21) which is immediately followed by the individual petitions, including several more reversals of attainder. The heading of the first petition, from the duke of Norfolk, begins Memorandum quod dicto vicesimo tertio die Januarii . All the subsequent entries, to the end of membrane 22, begin Item, dicto vicesimo tertio die and were evidently regarded as a single series. The series is broken on membrane 21, which contains only a single entry, designed to allow the earl Douglas to equip himself for the French campaign by borrowing against the security of his royal annuities (item 30). Unlike an analogous concession to lord Duras (item 26) this is couched not as a petition but as a royal grant. The sequence of individual petitions resumes on membrane 20 with two lengthy bills from Henry Bodrugan (items 31-2) which continue onto membrane 15, and one concerning the former priory of West Sherborne (item 33) which carries the sequence onto membrane 14, where it ends with room to spare. The entries for the session end with more royal business. The act of attainder forms a distinct section, made up of membranes 13-11. The next instalment in the saga of war finance begins a new membrane [10] and continues onto membrane 8, followed by the record of parliament's dissolution on 14 March.

Much of the royal business could be characterised as tidying up. The settlement with the Hanse was not, as in the previous session, a matter of international diplomacy but concerned the terms on which they were to hold the Steelyard, their London base. The clerk of parliament, John Gunthorpe, drew up the necessary letters patent, but not until 23 March, over a week after parliament had ended. (fn. int1472-28) There were also loose ends to be tied off in the settlement of the Warwick inheritance. Because the Neville patrimony had been held under male entail, and neither the earl of Warwick nor his younger brother John had been attainted, the land should have passed to John's son George Neville. But Edward had given the bulk of it to Gloucester soon after his return to England in 1471, and there he intended it to stay. On 23 February the king, with the authority of parliament, vested the land in Gloucester and his heirs as long as there should be any male heir of John Neville alive (item 16). It was a curiously vulnerable settlement, as became apparent when George Neville died without children in May 1483, and with hindsight it is surprising that Gloucester did not persuade the king to tie up his possession of the land more securely. (fn. int1472-29) On the roll the settlement is presented as a royal grant, but the original bill is endorsed particulares de ultimo sessione usque ad xxiij die de Januar' anno xiiij^o . (fn. int1472-30) The far more modest gains of Clarence were to be held under the same conditions by an act agreed on the following day (item 17). The brothers' other landed interests were also tidied up, in ways that rewarded them for their acquiescence in the settlement. On 3 March an exchange of land between the king and Gloucester was recorded and authorised (items 18-19). On 13 March an earlier grant to Clarence of land to him and the heirs male of his body was voided and replaced by a grant to him, his heirs and assigns (item 20). Gloucester also had a recovery that might be thought open to question confirmed (item 21).

For the first time since 1463 parliament passed an act of attainder. The former Neville associates involved in 1469-71 had been absorbed back into the Yorkist polity, mainly as retainers of Gloucester and (to a lesser extent) of Clarence and remained unscathed. But the leaders of the Lincolnshire Rising of 1470 were not so lucky, and nor were the de Veres and their associates accused of involvement at Barnet, and Thomas Tresham, John Delves and Robert Bainton accused of involvement at Tewkesbury (items 34-9). These were, on the whole, the dead or the obdurate. John de Vere, earl of Oxford, and his brothers had been engaged in opposition since Barnet, and had ended up besieged on St Michael's Mount at the end of 1473. They submitted early in 1474, which earned them a pardon for their lives (item 42) but left the other penalties of attainder in place.

The part played in that submission by Henry Bodrugan helps to explain the favourable treatment he received in this session, which saw his own lawlessness brushed under the carpet (items 32-2). The previous session had accepted accusations against Bodrugan made by Thomas Neville and John Arundell. Both were now over-ridden and Bodrugan exonerated. As had been the case earlier in the parliament, when Thomas Trethewy secured the invalidation of John Vivian's bill from the previous session, neither of the bills against Bodrugan appears on the roll for the session in which it was presented and agreed, but each is rehearsed in Bodrugan's response. The implication is that the rolls were written up sufficiently in arrears for acts modified in later sessions to be omitted or, perhaps more plausibly, that entries were written up at the end of each session but the membranes were not sewn together until the end of the parliament, allowing emendations and deletions to be made at a late stage.

The parliament had been primarily kept in being to deal with the financing of the impending war. The first item enrolled after the resumption of parliament on 23 January was still concerned with the yield from the income tax. The promised money had been largely collected, but much of it had not been paid over to the appointed keepers, something the act blames primarily on deliberate malfeasance on the part of its collectors and keepers 'to the grete displeasour of our said sovereigne lord' (item 10). The solution was to order the collectors and keepers to bring the money in their hands to the exchequer before Ascension Day (4 May) under pain of forfeiting three times the value of the money they should have had and did not deliver. But the underlying problem was the complexity of the assessments. The last entry on the roll before the dissolution returned to the question and here the tone was rather different (item 43). The entry takes the form of an indenture between king and commons. It is undated but was probably agreed late in February, although it was not formally announced until the last day of the session (item 44). It again rehearsed what had gone before (with the same error about dates), this time as a prelude to admitting that although some of the money had been collected, the levy of the £51,147 4s 7d three farthings was proving 'so diffuse and laborious' that the half due on 24 June was unlikely to be collected in time. The chancellor had put it to the commons, on the king's behalf, that the money was needed sooner rather than later, and the commons had agreed to replace that element of the grant with one whole fifteenth and tenth and three quarters of another, with the usual rebate and exceptions. The names of the collectors were to be notified to the chancery before 8 March - the one internal clue to the date of the indenture.

So far, so cooperative. But the commons were clearly not happy with the tax burden and the strains it was placing on everyone involved. They recognised that corrupt or inefficient collectors were a genuine problem, and asked that the fines imposed on them should be used to offset the tax by being used only on the provision of the 13,000 archers. But they also tried to protect honest collectors from undue pressure from the royal administration, and they launched a furious attack on the collectors of the tenth and fifteenth granted in 1474 who had refused to allow the deductions specified in the grant (pocketing them themselves), demanding that justices of the peace might be given power to award damages against offending collectors in such cases. The commons' anger surfaces in the flat reassertion that if the king in person did not proceed with the expedition before Midsummer 1476 'all thies forseid grauntes in this present endenture conteyned, be utterly voide, and of noon effecte in every part therof'.

The mood of the commons cannot have been improved by the king's resort, as in 1465, to an extra-parliamentary way of raising money. He did not, this time, ask beneficiaries of royal patronage for a share of their gains - that would probably have seemed too much like the grant of one tenth of the value of land and office which had been parliament's initial contribution in 1472. Instead, by the end of 1474, Edward had resolved to ask those who could afford it to make a free gift - a benevolence - towards the war effort. The Great Chronicle, which has a detailed account of the benevolence, claims that he did so with the agreement of the lords, which must mean a great council since the decision was taken outside a session of parliament. (fn. int1472-31) Coventry received a letter sent under the privy seal on 21 December 1474 announcing the king's decision to turn to his subjects for help. The first half of any money offered was to be paid by 1 February 1475, the remainder by the following 1 May. (fn. int1472-32)

The essence of the benevolence, in sharp distinction to parliamentary subsidies, was that it constituted a personal appeal by the king. Edward spent Christmas 1474 at Coventry and on Christmas Eve the mayor and bailiffs were informed that on the following Monday (26 December) all residents with land yielding more than £10 a year or with goods worth more than £100 were to appear before the king. To make sure that they did the mayor and his colleagues were to produce a list of the people in both categories. (fn. int1472-33) The Great Chronicle provides the well-known story of the Suffolk widow who doubled her contribution when the king kissed her and claims that the benevolence raised more than two fifteenths would have done. This is an exaggeration - by the end of 1475 receipts stood at £21,656 8s 3d - but it gives some sense of how contemporaries regarded the benevolence. (fn. int1472-34) John Stow captures the sense of mingled outrage and grudging admiration that the success of this manoeuvre provoked. He reports that the king 'called this grant of money, a benevolence, notwithstanding that many grudged therat, and called it a malevolence', but adds that Edward asked so nicely that it was almost impossible to say 'no'. (fn. int1472-35)

It had been a bruising session, and, given that preparations for the expedition were now under way, the king must have been furious at the clear implication that the commons still did not trust him to go. At the end of the session it was left to the chancellor to express the king's thanks, although the scale of the grants might have been thought to merit one of Edward's gracious speeches ore proprio . The roll ends with the common petitions, which are in two blocks. The first (of eleven bills) is undated and the heading refers only to 'various common petitions' (items 45-55). Only two can be approximately dated. Item 52, concerning commissions of sewers, was exemplified under the great seal on 12 July 1474. (fn. int1472-36) Item 54, discussed below, must be later than October 1473. The heading of the second block (of five bills) links them to the final session (items 56-60). Eleven common petitions are a modest haul from seven sessions, but the statute rolls give no support to the possibility that anything from the first two sessions has been 'lost' in the division of the rolls. It is striking that three of the first block and all but one of the second block are couched as royal decisions rather than petitions from the commons, suggesting that little time was given to matters of general concern.

The bills sponsored by the commons are a very mixed bunch and only two of them pick up on concerns articulated elsewhere in the parliament. The penultimate item in the first group (item 54), continues the commons' preoccupation with lawlessness along the Welsh border manifest in the speaker's address in the first session. It rehearses that the commons had asked for a great power to be sent into the Welsh March to deal with the lawlessness there (something which is not made explicit in the roll). The king had sent the queen and the prince of Wales, with many great lords. This is not dated in the bill, but must refer to the late spring and summer of 1473. The queen and her son were at Ludlow at the end of April and a judicial commission headed by earl Rivers and Lord Ferrers of Chartley was active in the region in March and April. (fn. int1472-37) Emboldened by this, a local jury at Hereford was prepared to indict the malefactors, but their action was overturned at Ross on Wye on 28 October 1473, when those indicted were acquitted. The commons petitioned that the proceedings on that occasion be voided and the king agreed. The block of petitions explicitly associated with the final session begins with the petition of 1 March 1475 discussed above which postponed the division of assignments into annual instalments (item 56). This is one of only two items in this block to be dated. The other is the last item in the block, which is dated to 25 February: confirmation that enrolment was not necessarily in chronological order.

Other petitions presented by the commons, all of which were agreed, included measures to avert the shortage of bowstaves, prevent the royal appointment of men to supervise urban victuallers and enforce Magna Carta and other statutes allowing the destruction of fish weirs and other structures that blocked the free passage of river traffic (items 47, 48, 53). (fn. int1472-38) It may not be an accident that two of their petitions cite statutes of Edward III, the hero of the day (items 49, 53); drafters of petitions knew the importance of evoking current concerns. The commons also took action to secure the release of one of their members, the Chippenham representative William Hyde who had been arrested for debt (item 55).

The 'petitions' couched as royal announcements are an equally diverse collection. Two from the final session gave legal protection to those accompanying the king overseas (items 57-8). A third took action against trucebreakers - a real anxiety when Edward was anxious to maintain a European alliance against France (item 59). Something which hardly deserves its place among the 'common' petitions is an exemption for the prince of Wales from all the statutes regulating retaining (item 50). The prince himself was still too young for this to concern him directly and it was designed to strengthen the hand of the royal council established at Ludlow, with the prince as its titular head, as a focus for royal authority in the region. (fn. int1472-39) More traditional concerns surface in three items concerned with trade, but all three were sponsored by the king on financial grounds rather than by the commons. One sought to minimise the evasion of duties on imported and exported cloth, emphasising that the proceeds of such duties went towards the keeping of the sea and their enforcement was therefore a matter of national concern (item 46). Imported cloth upon which duty had been paid was to be sealed by the collectors of subsidy, with penalties for anyone who put unsealed cloths on sale. Evasion by exporters took the form of packing cloth in such a way that its real value was not apparent. In future cloth was to be packed in the presence of the collectors. Two items addressed attempts to avoid the requirement to ship wool to Calais by exporting it through Newcastle - an option which was only meant to be available to northern wool producers. The 1463 parliament had recognised that wool from the midlands was being taken up to Newcastle for shipment and had attempted to deal with it by imposing penalties on anyone found guilty (1463 items 18, 51). The strategy had evidently not been a success. Now it was ordained that wool from Newcastle could only be shipped to Calais or to New Middelburg (item 51). On 25 February 1475 this was amended to Calais or Bergen-op-Zoom (item 60).

The king's need for money had dominated the parliament and the resulting financial pressure had been intense. In May 1475 Margaret Paston commented to her son John II, 'The kyng goth so nere us in this cuntre, both to pooere and ryche, that I wote not how we shall lyff but yff the world amend'. (fn. int1472-40) The justification for that pressure, the invasion of France, duly took place in the summer of 1475. But without the backing of his leading ally, the duke of Burgundy, Edward had little choice but to allow himself to be bought off by Louis XI. Opinion in England was outraged. The Crowland Chronicler believed that if Edward had not taken strong measures against lawlessness on his return resentment against the waste of so much money would have produced outright rebellion. (fn. int1472-41) Edward was not to call another parliament until 1478, and was not to ask for another parliamentary subsidy until 1483.

Appendix: 1472

1

Source : Canterbury Cathedral, Priory Register N, fos 265-270, printed by J. B. Sheppard (ed), Literae Cantuarienses (Rolls Series, 3 vols, 1887-9), iii, pp. 274-85: a speech made to 'William Alyngton and ye sirs presentyng here the comminalte of this lande'. The text is paraphrased here.

The king is mindful of his duty to set his people in ease, wealth and prosperity, which can only be achieved through peace. By dissension and discord the mightiest realms have fallen into poverty and desolation. The principal cause of the recent great disturbance is now, through God's grace and the king's prowess, rooted out so that there can be no doubt in anyone's mind that our sovereign lord is king in deed as he has been since the beginning of his reign in right. But the long unrest has left many unhealed wounds and lawlessness is rampant. If the law is not strictly enforced, and offenders executed, within a few years there might have been such destruction of the people necessary for the defence of the land that outward enemies would be encouraged to attack. And a defensive war would be very costly and need more people than an expedition against the enemy. Recent dealings with France have produced nothing and have been a cloak for French sedition and the encouragement of civil war.

The best remedy is war outward, offering honourable employment to the disaffected under the king's leadership. The king has been disposed to this since the beginning of his reign, but was hindered by his own subjects, stirred by the king of France. Now it seems expedient to take the war to France, as Scipio left Rome and took the war against Hannibal to Carthage. It offers an opportunity to recover not only Normandy and Guyenne but also the crown of France in alliance with the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany. The king of Aragon is already at war against Louis and has gained Roussillon. If the king is successful it will not cost so much to keep the sea, which at the moment costs more than the subsidy, tonage and poundage can yield.

Many gentlemen, including younger sons, might thereby be well rewarded and reside in the land for its defence, and men of war be placed in garrisons there and live on their wages who are otherwise likely to be the nuisance that they are now. It should be remembered that since the Conquest justice, peace and prosperity have only been long-lasting in the land in the days of those kings who made war outward: Henry I, Henry II, Richard I, Henry III for the time he waged outward war, Edward I, Edward III, Henry V and Henry VI. Which last Henry, notwithstanding his simple-mindedness, stood in glory and honour while the war lasted, but afterwards everything fell into decay. So it also happened in Rome when they no longer had external enemies to fight.

If England does not go to war it will make enemies of the dukes of Brittany and Burgundy and trade with the territories of the latter will suffer. The commons are urged to give the king the aid to allow him to achieve his goals.

2

Source : Westminster Abbey Muniments 12235; discussed by D. A. L. Morgan, 'The political after-life of Edward III: the apotheosis of a warmonger', EHR 112 (1997), 856-81. The text is printed in its entirety below. Deletions have been omitted and insertions printed without comment.

Lyke it your good grace forto be advertysed howe þat every Christen man is bonden to revenge Goddes quarelles, in especial lordes and knyghtes wiche er sworne therto, undre whose prowesse reule and discrecion the guydyng fame and infamye reasteth of every realme. Revolve croniques, serche tymes passed, remembre the dayes and blessed actes of your moost noble progenitours and it shal clerly appere that God obbeyed, the course and recourse of merchandyse iustly kepte, and thordre of þe lawe dieuly observed, with victoriose triumphes the princes of this land have undre Goddes myghty soferance excelled al the contrayes adiacent. Emong wiche dedes of blesed memory it is not to sofre passe undre sylence the invyncyable manhode, the undisceyved trouthe and immortal fame of youre noble progenitour Edward iij wiche diffyed kowertyse, avansed manhode and magnyfied trouthe. This noble prince, this princely knyght, this knyghtly conquerour so loved, drad and obbeyed the prynce of prynces, the knyght of knyghtes & conqueror of al conquestes, that not only he encreased his olde renomye bot also made his subiectes loved and drad in al strange landes. If God be dispysed man may not be drad. If man dread not man, wherof serveth þe law? Wher þe law is not kepte the realme is lost. If þe realme peryshe off necessite honour, richesse and dignyte shal perishe þerwithe. Owte of oon inconvenyent greweth right many.

And how be it that owte of the venymose rotes of kursed symony and periurye grewethe al maner exorbytant myscheves, wherby with in your realm the vengeance of God is provoked, peas hathe ben exyled and þe lawe subverted, withowten thextirpacion of wiche honour may not be rekovered, richesse restored and þis your noble realme stabylyshed, consydered that Goddes opne enemyes may not be demed your trew subiectes.

It is thoght þat thartycles folowyng considered and welweyed, this youre realme shal lightly be enryched, verteu encreased and vices excluded:

Ferst, sythe God is and wol be lord of al lordes, that nothyng be presumed or named part of your lawe wyche myght be knawen contrarye unto Goddes lawe.

Item, that the churche of England ioy and peasebly reioyse þe franchyses, pryveleages and libertes as thactes stableshed and ratifyed in every parlyament signifye.

Item þat every juge, every lerned man or presumed lerned in þe landes lawe with al ther adherentes þat let þe said libertees of ther trew execucion be owte of your protection as largely as any of them þat ren in þe breve kalled Premunire facias.

[m. 2] Item, sythe noon inhabytant within this realme, ryche or pouer, may be excused by ignorance of your lawe and as yit it was never stablyshed bot þat dyverse lerned men take dyversely dyverse opynyones, aswel juges as odre, wherthorghe iugement in assymylable case within few yeres hathe receyved contrary effectes and isshewes, please it youre highenesse, by thadvyse of al your lordes spirituel and temporell and þe comones in þis parlyament assembled and by auctorite of þe same, fortassigne a certeyn numbre of wel lerned and weldisposed men tengrose your said lawe by nature of certeyn tytles, wiche effectuosely gronded & wryten it be lefull nether to juge nether unto any odre forto vary from þe sayd wrytynges. And in case, wiche God defend, any of youre juges þat nowe er, or any of þer successours wyche shalbe juges in youre tyme or in the tyme of any of your heyres kynges of þis realme, make any iugement contrary to þe lawe wryten and ordeyned by auctorite of parliament or parlyamentes, that then the party hurt thorghe any suche corrupte iugement may by auctorite of þis acte all his interest with triple damage rekovere of þe juge or juges þat breke þis holy ordynance.

Item, for asmuche as thorghe untrew interpretacion of youre said lawes God, holy churche and goddes lawes have been dispysed, youre trew liege peple put unto right great and importible unrest, many unto þe losse of þer lyves, many to þe losse of þer landes and tenements, many to þe losse of all þat they myght lese, only for þe fortherance of a fewe unhappy, unshamefast and gracelesse, wiche undre pretensed trouthe mysguyded þe lawe, in perpetuel undoyng of þis your realme wyche ye er sworne to defend, maynten and iustyfye, it like your said highnesse þat all plees be pleted in Laten or in Englyshe and þat nothyng conteyned in byll or in plee be receyved for law bot þat þe pleter expresse þe place wher that it is gronded uppon peyn of losse of the cause.

Item, cotidian experience sheweth þat by subtyle covyne of som pretensed lerned in þe lawe dyverse trewe causes peryshe. Pleas it your poyssaunte maieste forto stabylyshe what every attorney and man of councell shall receyve in every cause. And if any trew cause be mysguyded or lost by his untrowthe or rechellesnesse, that then he answer his clyent for al his hool interest by the equyte of þis your moost gracieux ordynance.

Item, sythe every statute is gronded by auctorite of parliament, that every word comprised in every statute be only undrestond as þe vulgar or comon receyveth every suche word, bot if þe significacion þerof be amplyfyed by auctorite of som parliament, so þat þe declaracion of suche statute, actes or statutes rest not uppon þe opynyon and fume of þe juges.

[m. 3] Item, syth in dyverse courtes dyverse men have bene dyversely endyted mo wrangaely then trewly and so hath been enduced komon periurye thorgh the abusyon of the lawe, that þe sacrement of oothe is nat drad, and if any so endyted desire or labour to knawe who hase so falsely accused hym it is answerred anoon that they er sworne to kepe þe kynges concell, wher all þe land knaweth þat never any of suche is, was or ever shal be able to be of youre noble concell or in any wyse forto gif you sufficient advertysement in cause concernyng þe comon welthe, pleas it þerfor youre good grace þat noman be endyted in any maner action or cryme bot if thaccuser or accusers be aswel wryden as the accused. And in caas that þe endyted may be lawfully clered, that then thaccuser or accusers receyve the same peyn that was thoght ayenst þaccused. And if þaccusers or eny of them ren into eny sanctuarye or into any prevyleaged place, wherthorgh the peynalte of þis statute may not be executed, that then þe party hurted have his execucion ayenst every of thenquest that falsely so endyted hym.

Item, for as muche as þe isshewe of þe law reastethe uppon the saynges of thenequestes and wher it was ordeyned xij knyghtes or xij trew worshipfull of your liege peple to have þe knawleage as it is þe lawe wryten and exercysed in al þe tyme of your moost noble progenytours, nowe late dayes xij untrewe kovytose keytyves, God not drad, the lawe not weyed, the trouthe not considred, have saved and condempned, dispossessed and abled unto possession whom they lyste. Pleas it your habundaunte grace and iustice that no man be enpanelled uppon any enquest of lyf or lyvelode bot progenitours have borne armes and that he be halden of trewe and hool conscience, havyng asmuche yerly lyvelode as þe landes and tenements that shal stand in demand, uppon peyn xl li to be rered of þe shyref for every unable man to be enpannelled in any suche enquest. And in like wyse þe shiref to be punyshed wher that he or hys take any mony or promesse of any person or persons for þe makyng of any enquest in what case so ever it be, the oon halfe þerof unto your castel werkes, the odre halfe unto þe party that wol bryng it into your excheker. Provyded alwey þat citees and franchysed places ioy þer old custumes, so that they be not falsely executed.

Address: [To the] kyng our liege lord

Endorsed: Statuta & ordinaciones

3

Source : PRO C49/36/6 [Two copies of the charge given to the constables by the king's commissioners for the collection of the tenth part of the annual value of livelihoods. The charge opens with a recapitulation of parliament's reasoning which echoes the speech paraphrased as appendix item 1:]

First to sheue to the habitauntis of the seyde toune that the kyng and the lordis spirituall & temporall and þe comyns beyng in þis present parlement have by grete deliberacion studyhyd þe weyye and the moyans þat myght best serve to leye apart manslaughter, robbors, extorcioners and oppressioners and oþer ryottes so þt every persone riche and poore myght sewrly and pesibly withoute juperdye of his persone or los of his goodis intende to his bisynes and ocupacion, and among all othyr thynggis hit was thoghte and advysed þat the most convenient moyen and remedye thereof and also to geete ayen the grete wurshyp and riches þat of old tyme hathe be in this londe were to make warr outeward specially into Frauns, wyche of longe tyme hathe be and yet is grettyst emny to this lond, by the whyche warre makyng the kyng shuld not only by Goddys grace gete hit to his abeysauns accedyng to his ryght but also gretely enriche hymself and all this reeme, and set the pepill now beyng idyll, by whom the myscheves aboveseyde hathe grouyn, in goode ocupacion. And forsomyche as þe seyde loordys and comyns undirstonde for certeyn that the kyng oure sovereyn lord of his knyghty corage is fully determynyd with Goddis assystens to goo in his persone over the see aboute the conquest of þe seyde realme of Frauns hyf he mey be holpyn sufficiantly there unto by his lovyng and treue subiettes as othir his proienitors kynggis of Inglond have bene in tyme past. For the seson was never seen so goode and convenyent for the seyde conquest as hit is at this tyme, consideryng þat the kyng of Aragon and the dukis of Burgoyn & Brytayne with many othir grete princis be dayly makyng warre to the seyde Frenhskyng [ sic ] and hathe promysyd to yeve theyre assystens to helpe to oure seyde sovereyn lord aboute the seyde conquest hyf he wull cum thydyr in all goodely hast.

[The charge continues with an account of the grants by the lords and commons, and instructions as to how the money should be levied.]

4

Source : PRO C49/36/25

Petition from the commons rehearsing the grant of a tenth part of the annual value of livelihoods and that its collectors were to deposit the money with the sovereign ruler or keeper of a castle, town, house of religion or other place within the region for which they were responsible. Some sovereign rulers and keepers have refused to take custody of the money and the act imposes no penalty for such behaviour. Be it therefore ordained by the authority of the present parliament that with effect from 1 March following the opening of parliament, anyone refusing to keep the money, or refusing to indent for its safe-keeping or not keeping it safely, shall pay to the king as much money as they have refused to keep or kept negligently. Proclamation is to be made of the ordinance.

Address: To the kyng oure soverayn lord

Answer: Le roy s'advisera

5

Source : PRO C49/37/7

Petition from the commons rehearsing that in the past all linen cloth made in the duchy of Brittany and adjoining regions had to be of stated dimensions, but the cloths are now smaller and the merchants who sell them take only money, not English goods, out of the country. To ordain that with effect from Easter 1474 [the year is inserted over an erasure] no cloth shall be sold that is not of the correct size and local officials are to have power to inspect cloth put on sale. Breton merchants are to employ the proceeds on buying woolen cloth [this requirement is an amendment squeezed into a deletion too small for it] upon pain of forfeiture.

Address: To the kyng our liege lord

Answer: Le roy s'advisera

6a

Source : Birmingham Public Library, A.591, printed by R. A. Griffiths, 'The hazards of civil war: the Mountford family and the "Wars of the Roses"' reprinted in idem , King and Country, England and Wales in the Fifteenth Century (1991), pp. 381-2 [undated, but most probably dating from this parliament]

Petition of Edmund Mountford, knight, for the reversal of the act of attainder passed against him in the parliament of 4 November 1461, saving to Simon Mountford, knight, all rights he had in the land on 4 March 1461 or at any subsequent time, by the king's letters patent or otherwise and to all other persons such right and title as they had in the same on 4 March 1461.

Address: to the kynge oure liege lorde

Answer: [none]

6b

Source : Birmingham Public Library, A.592, printed by R. A. Griffiths, 'The hazards of civil war: the Mountford family and the "Wars of the Roses"' reprinted in idem , King and Country, England and Wales in the Fifteenth Century (1991), pp. 382

Proviso to the reversal of the act of attainder of Edmund Mountford protecting the rights of Simon Mountford.

7

Source : CPR 1467-77, p. 338 (22 November 1472, warranted by the king)

A record of the creation of Louis de Brugges de la Gruthuse as earl of Winchester by the king in full parliament at the request of the commons of the realm.