tunc comes senescallus, comes constabularius, _comes marescallus_, vel duo eorum, eligent viginti quinque personas de omnibus paribus regni, etc., etc. It need scarcely be said that no such right belonged _ex officio_ to these three magnates, or was even claimed by them. Yet no one has suggested, so far as I know, that there must have been a reason for inserting this clause, and that in such reason we may find a note of time. Ordainers were elected, under Edward II., in 1310, and a Commission under Richard II. in 1386. No one, it is certain, could have introduced the reference to an “Earl Marshal” in 1310, for Thomas, future marshal of England; was then only a boy of ten. But in 1386 there was, in Nottingham, an Earl Marshal, and one who was, at the time, taking a leading part. Indeed the three chiefs of the opposition at the time were Gloucester, Derby, and Nottingham, who respectively represented the Constable, the Steward,[647] and the Marshal. Add to this that it was in the Parliament of 1386 that we find the precedent of Edward II. prominent in the minds of men,[648] and that it was also in this Parliament that appeal was made to a supposed statute, and that the ‘Modus’ contains a chapter “De Absentia regis in Parliamento” (a grievance in 1386), and we have at least a fair presumption that the ‘Modus’--at any rate in the form that has reached us--dates from the constitutional crisis of 1386.[649] I shall now close this article, which has already exceeded its original limits, with a document hitherto unknown, I believe, to English historians. The Rolls of Parliament preserve, in the proceedings of 1397 against Gloucester, the appeal of treason presented to the king by the nobles of his party at Nottingham (5th Aug., 1395). But that appeal is not known to us at first hand. I believe that I have found the terms of the document, which correspond, it will be seen, with the printed version. But instead of closing with the words “soit enterment quasse et adnulle,” as in the Rolls of Parliament (iii. 341), it proceeds: laquelle bille nous le prouuerons pour vray avec laide de Dieu et de sa benoiste mere tant comme la vie nous dure. Then follows, in parallel columns, the interesting portion of the document, namely, the five articles of accusation, which are, it will be found, largely different and much shorter than on the Rolls. Opposite them is a notable confession which, from evidence it contains, I assign to the duke of Gloucester.