Finally, Thomas Hardyng tells us that the punishment of removal from the Council was inflicted upon the Prince by the King, but does not mention the offence which was thus visited. Hardyng was a contemporary; indeed, as he was born 1378, he was very nearly of the same age as Henry. So far his testimony is valuable, though his account of the incident seems to have been written quite late in life. But, as the Prince’s offence is not specified, it has but a very indirect bearing on the question. On the other hand, an examination of the records of the Court of the King’s Bench shows that there is no entry to be found in them of any committal of the Prince. It has been pointed out that the summary committal to prison of an offender, as described by Elyot, was not the course of proceeding at the time. This, however, may be waived. The Prince may have been tried by a jury impanelled on the spot, and sent to prison when found guilty by them; and for this course of proceeding a more dramatically effective committal by the presiding judge may have been substituted. But the incident must, one would think, have been recorded in one way or another, and the absolute silence of the rolls and year-books of the Court affords a strong presumption that nothing of the kind ever occurred. But on looking back to the records of an earlier time, we find that on one occasion a Prince of Wales had been guilty of contempt of Court and had been punished for it by his father. In the thirty-fourth year of Edward the First, one William de Breora, having had judgment pronounced against him by Roger de Hegham, one of the Barons of the Exchequer, “climbed in contemptuous fashion upon the bar, and with grave and bitter words found fault with the said judgment and also insulted the said Roger as he was leaving the Court.” The Court proceeded to punish him for this offence, and rested its action on what had recently been done in a similar case. “Such acts,” it says, “namely, contempt and disobedience done to the servants of our Lord King, as to the King himself and his Court, are exceedingly odious. This was lately manifested when the said King removed his eldest and dearly beloved son, Edward, Prince of Wales, from his house for nearly the space of half-a-year, because he had spoken gross and bitter words to a servant of the King; nor would he suffer him to come into his presence till he had satisfied the aforesaid servant of the King in the matter of his offence.”