Parliament 419

give it the more appropriate name for this later period.
At the close of a session of Parliament the petitions upon
which action had been taken would need to be enrolled,
and, until well into the fifteenth century, it was left al-
most wholly to the Council or to the judges to determine
what petitions should receive the formality and perma-
nence of statutory enrolment and what not. And of
course either Council or judges were quickly responsive to
the king's will. When therefore a granted common peti-
tion, one in which the Commons had united, received the
less formal enrolment it was felt that the king had not
acted in good faith. It ran counter to the dawning no-
tion that a statute was something more solemn and perma-
nent, and, however dimly, that another law-declaring
power had collaborated with the king in making it.1
There were, however, not many instances of such action by
the king after -this distinction had become clear. But
king and Council still made ordinances and these were
sometimes used to limit or injure a statute which the king
had not been able directly to prevent.2

A further difficulty lay in the king's assumption of the
right to_aannl a statute. This illustrates the difference
between ordinances and statutes and worked powerfully
at the time to clarify thought upon the matter. The
king had been able to annul an ordinance because he had
made it. He could destroy that which rested upon his
sole authority. Edward III. tried to annul a statute.
In 1341, a radical measure was passed, an important pro-
vision of which was that ministers and judges beappointed
byJParliament; the king,^ider threat ofno stibgdy, was
to it,^ ana it became a sStuteT* After

1 The development of these ideas is seen in the protests and requests of
the years 1353 and 1354. See A. and S., documents 75 and 76.
3 But for a time in the reign of the despotic Richard II. they were seri-
ous. "What is the use," asks a contemporary, "of statutes made in par-
liament? They have no effect. The king and his council habitually alter
and efface what has previously been established in parliament, not merely
by the community, but even by the nobility." Cited in Maitland, C, H. £.,
pp. 187, 188.
s A. and S., document 62.