[415] Petition of the "poverail" of Greenwich and Lewisham on whom alms are no longer bestowed (one _maille_ a week to every beggar that came) to the "grant damage des poores entour, et des almes les fondours que sont en Purgatorie." 4 Ed. III. "Rotuli Parliamentorum," vol. ii. p. 49. [416] 4 Ed. III., "Rotuli Parliamentorum," vol. ii. p. 33. [417] Good Parliament of 1376. [418] The Commons had been bold enough to complain of the expenses of the king and of the too great number of prelates and ladies he supported: "de la multitude d'Evesques qui ont seigneuries et sont avancez par le Roy et leur meignee; et aussi de pluseurs dames et leur meignee qui demuront en l'ostel du Roy et sont a ses costages." Richard replies in an angry manner that he "voet avoir sa regalie et la libertee roiale de sa corone," as heir to the throne of England "del doun de Dieu." 1397, "Rotuli Parliamentorum," vol. iii. p. 339. The Commons say nothing more, but they mark the words, to remember them in due time. [419] "Dixit expresse, velut austero et protervo, quod leges sue erant in ore suo et aliquotiens in pectore suo. Et quod ipse solus posset mutare et condere leges regni sui." "Rotuli Parliamentorum," vol. iii. p. 419. [420] Cheruel, "Dictionnaire des Institutions de la France," at the word _Parlement_. As early as the thirteenth century, Bracton, in England, declared that "laws bound the legislator," and that the king ought to obey them; his theory, however, is less bold than the one according to which the Commons act in the fourteenth century: "Dicitur enim rex," Bracton observes, "a bene regendo et non a regnando, quia rex est dum bene regit, tyrannus dum populum sibi creditum violenter opprimit dominatione. Temperet igitur potentiam suam per legem quae frenum est potentiae, quod secundum leges vivat, quod hoc sanxit lex humana quod leges suum ligent latorem." "De Legibus," 3rd part chap. ix. [421] "Chroniques," ed. S. Luce, i. p. 337. [422] "Memoires," ed. Dupont, Societe de l'histoire de France, 1840 ff., vol. ii. p. 142, _sub anno_, 1477. [423] Unpublished letter to M. de Lionne, from London, July 6, 1665, Archives of the Affaires Etrangeres, vol. lxxxvi. [424] "Esprit des Lois," vol. xx. chap. vii., "Esprit de l'Angleterre sur le Commerce." [425] A. Sorel, "l'Europe et la Revolution Francaise," vol. i. p. 337. [426] Parliament reverts at different times to these mines in the fourteenth century: "Come en diverses parties deinz le Roialme d'Engleterre sont diverses miners des carbons, dont les Communes du dit partie ont lour sustenantz en grande partie...." 51 Ed. III., "Rotuli Parliamentorum." [427] 46 Ed. III., "Rotuli Parliamentorum," vol. ii. p. 311. The king returns a vague answer. See below, pp. 515, 517. [428] "They travaile in every londe," says Gower of them, in his "Confessio Amantis," ed. Pauli, vol. iii. p. 109.