The 285
In the fourteenth century, the machinery of
could not ran itself and the to be a
Medieval kings, bad, laborious;
government was in a way hard for to
understand. A would not work an im-
possible king. This is not quite the whole story
Edward II.; he did positive tilings that
enmity, and Ms reign would have dragged on longer
it not been for his wife Mortimer. But the chivf
trouble was that the country drifting into misrule
through lack of governance, and it was felt that a change
was absolutely necessary. The method used awk-
ward and looks a like revolution: writs to sum-
mon a Parliament to were issued in the king's
name and he was to a
Parliament clearly thought it full power to a
worthless king, but was troubled to legal machinery.
But whatever the cause or the method, a
deposition, and, in an uncritical it would be to
serve powerfully as a precedent
In the discussion of Parliament's growth of power, it
will appear how, throughout Edward Ill's reign, the
arbitrary action of the king was limited by his dependence
upon the country for the great sums of money needed
for the war with France.x A king so placed could never
have refused to confirm the Charters even had he wished
to. A notable confirmation in 1368 declared that
at the parliament of our lord the king . . . it is assented
and accorded, that the Great Charter and the Charter of the
Forest be hoi den and kept in all points; and if any statute be
made to the contrary, that shall be tioiden for none.2
This making the Charters a specially inviolable portion
of the fundamental common law was continuing and
confirming a way of regarding them that had begun by
1 See below, pp. 400, 410, 419.
a This clause was referred to several times in the debates on the Peti-
tion of Right in 1628.