e same lawful title; and that he was
in possession of the crown from the day that he assumed the government,
tendered to him by the acclamations of the people.[*] They expressed
their abhorrence of the usurpation and intrusion of the house of
Lancaster, particularly that of the earl of Derby, otherwise called
Henry IV.; which, they said, had been attended with every kind of
disorder, the murder of the sovereign, and the oppression of the
subject. They annulled every grant which had passed in those reigns;
they reinstated the king in all the possessions which had belonged to
the crown at the pretended deposition of Richard II.; and though they
confirmed judicial deeds and the decrees of inferior courts, they
reversed all attainders passed in any pretended parliament; particularly
the attainder of the earl of Cambridge, the king's grandfather; as well
as that of the earls of Salisbury and Glocester, and of Lord Lumley, who
had been forfeited for adhering to Richard II.[**]

Many of these votes were the result of the usual violence of party: the
common sense of mankind, in more peaceable times, repealed them: and the
statutes of the house of Lancaster, being the deeds of an established
government, and enacted by princes long possessed of authority, have
always been held as valid and obligatory. The parliament, however, in
subverting such deep foundations, had still the pretence of replacing
the government on its ancient and natural basis: but in their subsequent
measures, they were more guided by revenge, at least by the views of
convenience, than by the maxims of equity and justice. They passed an
act of forfeiture and attainder against Henry VI. and Queen Margaret and
their infant son Prince Edward: the same act was extended to the dukes
of Somerset and Exeter; to the earls of Northumberland, Devonshire,
Pembroke, Wilts; to the Viscount Beaumont; the Lords Roos, Nevil,
Clifford, Welles, Dacre, Gray of Rugemont, Hungerford; to Alexander
Hedie, Nicholas Latimer, Edmond Mountfort, John Heron, and many other
persons of distinction.[***]

* Cotton, p. 670.

** Cotton, p. 672. Statutes at large, 1 Edward IV cap. i.

*** Cotton, p. 670. W. Wyrcester, p. 490.

The parliament vested the estates of all these attainted persons in the
crown, though their sole crime was the adhering to a prince whom every
individual of the parliament had long recognized, and whom that very
king himself, who was now seated on the t