The most remarkable case is that of the Good Parliament of 1376, in which, after having deliberated apart, the Commons join the other house, and by the mouth of their Speaker, Peter de la Mare, bring in their bill of complaints against royalty: "And after that the aforesaid Commons came to Parliament, openly protesting that they were as willing and determined to help their noble liege lord ... as any others had ever been, in any time past.... But they said it seemed to them an undoubted fact, that if their liege lord had always had around him loyal counsellors and good officers ... our lord the king would have been very rich in treasure, and therefore would not have had such great need of burdening his Commons, either with subsidy, talliage, or otherwise...." A special list of grievances is drawn up against the principal prevaricators; their names are there, and their crimes; the king's mistress, Alice Perrers, is not forgotten. Then follow the petitions of the Commons, the number of which is enormous, a hundred and forty in all, in which abuses are pointed out one by one.[698] Formerly, say the Commons, "bishoprics, as well as other benefices of Holy Church, used to be, after true elections, in accordance with saintly considerations and pure charity, assigned to people found to be worthy of clerical promotion, men of clean life and holy behaviour, whose intention it was to stay on their benefices, there to preach, visit, and shrive their parishioners.... And so long as these good customs were observed, the realm was full of all sorts of prosperity, of good people and loyal, good clerks and clergy, two things that always go together...." The encroachments of the See of Rome in England are, for all right-minded people, "great subject of sorrow and of tears." Cursed be the "sinful city of Avignon," where simony reigns, so that "a sorry fellow who knows nothing of what he ought and is worthless" will receive a benefice of the value of a thousand marcs, "when a doctor of decree and a master of divinity will be only too glad to secure some little benefice of the value of twenty marcs." The foreigners who are given benefices in England "will never see their parishioners ... and more harm is done to Holy Church by such bad Christians than by all the Jews and Saracens in the world.... Be it again remembered that God has committed his flock to the care of our Holy Father the Pope, that they might be fed and not shorn."[699] The Commons fear nothing; neither king nor Pope could make them keep silence. In their mind the idea begins to dawn that the kingdom is theirs, and the king too; they demand that Richard, heir to the throne, shall be brought to them; they wish to see him; and he is shown to them.[700]