g. p. 361, 362.]

[Footnote 16: NOTE P, p. 312. To show how little credit is to be given
to this charge against Richard, we may observe, that a law in the 13th
Edward III. had been enacted against the continuance of sheriffs for
more than one year. But the inconvenience of changes having afterwards
appeared, from experience, the commons, in the twentieth of this king,
applied; by petition, that the sheriffs might be continued; though
that petition had not been enacted into a statute, by reason of other
disagreeable circumstances which attended it. See Cotton, p. 361. It was
certainly a very moderate exercise of the dispensing power in the king
to continue the sheriffs, after he found that that practice would be
acceptable to his subjects, and had been applied for by one house of
parliament; yet is this made an article of charge against him by the
present parliament. See article 18. Walsingham, speaking of a period
early in Richard's minority, says, "But what do acts of parliament
signify, when, after they are made, they take no effect, since the king,
by the advice of the privy council, takes upon him to alter, or wholly
set aside, all those things which by general consent had been ordained
in parliament?" If Richard, therefore, exercised the dispensing power,
he was warranted by the examples of his uncles and grandfather, and
indeed of all his predecessors from the time of Henry III., inclusive.]

[Footnote 17: NOTE Q, p. 318. The following passage in Cotton's
Abridgment (p. 196) shows a strange prejudice against the church and
churchmen. "The commons afterwards coming into the parliament, and
making their protestation, showed, that for want of good redress
about the king's person in his household, in all his courts, touching
maintainers in every county, and purveyors, the commons were daily
pilled, and nothing defended against the enemy, and that it should
shortly deprive the king and undo the state. Wherefore in the same
government they entirely require redress. Whereupon the king appointed
sundry bishops, lords, and nobles, to sit in privy council about these
matters; who, since that they must begin at the head, and go at the
request of the commons, they, in the presence of the king, charged
his confessor not to come into the court but upon the four principal
festivals." We should little expect that a popish privy council, in
order to preserve the king's morals, should order his confessor to be
kept at a distance