Some complaints are made by the commons, even during the first years of Henry's minority, that the king's subjects underwent arbitrary imprisonment, and were vexed by summonses before the council and by the newly-invented writ of subpoena out of chancery.[228] But these are not so common as formerly; and so far as the rolls lead us to any inference, there was less injustice committed by the government under Henry VI. and his father than at any former period. Wastefulness indeed might justly be imputed to the regency, who had scandalously lavished the king's revenue.[229] This ultimately led to an act for resuming all grants since his accession, founded upon a public declaration of the great officers of the crown that his debts amounted to 372,000_l._, and the annual expense of the household to 24,000_l._, while the ordinary revenue was not more than 5000_l._[230] [Sidenote: Impeachments of ministers.] 6. But before this time the sky had begun to darken, and discontent with the actual administration pervaded every rank. The causes of this are familiar--the unpopularity of the king's marriage with Margaret of Anjou, and her impolitic violence in the conduct of affairs, particularly the imputed murder of the people's favourite, the duke of Gloucester. This provoked an attack upon her own creature, the duke of Suffolk. Impeachment had lain still, like a sword in the scabbard, since the accession of Henry IV., when the commons, though not preferring formal articles of accusation, had petitioned the king that Justice Rickhill, who had been employed to take the former duke of Gloucester's confession at Calais, and the lords appellants of Richard II.'s last parliament, should be put on their defence before the lords.[231] In Suffolk's case the commons seem to have proceeded by bill of attainder, or at least to have designed the judgment against that minister to be the act of the whole legislature; for they delivered a bill containing articles against him to the lords, with a request that they would pray the king's majesty to enact that bill in parliament, and that the said duke might be proceeded against upon the said articles in parliament according to the law and custom of England. These articles contained charges of high treason, chiefly relating to his conduct in France, which, whether treasonable or not, seems to have been grossly against the honour and advantage of the crown. At a later day the commons presented many other articles of misdemeanor. To the former he made a defence, in presence of the king as well as the lords both spiritual and temporal; and indeed the articles of impeachment were directly addressed to the king, which gave him a reasonable pretext to interfere in the judgment. But from apprehension, as it is said, that Suffolk could not escape conviction upon at least some part of these charges, Henry anticipated with no slight irregularity the course of legal trial, and,