ov. 28; a longer period than the
business done in it seems to have required; and also that Suffolk, who
opened the session as chancellor, is styled "darrein chancellor" in the
articles of impeachment against him; so that he must have been removed
in the interval, which tallies with Knyghton's story. Besides, it is
plain, from the famous questions subsequently put by the king to his
judges at Nottingham, that both the right of retiring without a regular
dissolution, and the precedent of Edward II., had been discussed in
parliament, which does not appear anywhere else than in Knyghton.

[158] Rot. Parl. vol. iii. p. 219.

[159] Articles had been exhibited by the chancellor before the peers, in
the seventh of the king, against Spencer, bishop of Norwich, who had led
a considerable army in a disastrous expedition against the Flemings,
adherents to the anti-pope Clement in the schism. This crusade had been
exceedingly popular, but its ill success had the usual effect. The
commons were not parties in this proceeding. Rot. Parl. p 153.

[160] Rot. Parl. p. 221.

[161] Rot. Parl. p. 281.

[162] The judgment against Simon de Burley, one of those who were
executed on this occasion, upon impeachment of the commons, was reversed
under Henry IV.; a fair presumption of its injustice. Rot. Parl. vol.
iii. p. 464.

[163] Rot. Parl. 14 R II. p. 279; 15 R. II. p. 286.

[164] Rot. Parl. 13 R. II. p. 258.

[165] 17 R. II. p. 313.

[166] Rymer, t. vii. p. 583, 659.

[167] Hume has represented this as if the commons had petitioned for the
continuance of sheriffs beyond a year, and grounds upon this mistake
part of his defence of Richard II. (Note to vol. ii. p. 270, 4to. edit.)
For this he refers to Cotton's Abridgment; whether rightly or not I
cannot say, being little acquainted with that inaccurate book, upon
which it is unfortunate that Hume relied so much. The passage from
Walsingham in the same note is also wholly perverted; as the reader will
discover without further observation. An historian must be strangely
warped who quotes a passage explicitly complaining of illegal acts in
order to infer that those very acts were legal.

[168] The church would perhaps have interfered in behalf of Haxey if he
had only received the tonsure. But it seems that he was actually in
orders; for the record calls him Sir Thomas Haxey, a title at that time
regularly given to the parson of a parish. If this be so, it is a
remarkable authority f