Parliament 421

king's use of the j!:Hj£^^
These grew out of thesai^
annul an ordinance. The maker of a regulation could dis-
pense with its operation in individual cases or suspend it
for a time in certain classes of cases. Some .exercise of a
dispensing power is necessary for any executive; for no
rules of law, however good, can be enforced with absolute
rigidity without at times working injustice. The right
to pardon those convicted of crime is the commonest form
of such power* But there is evidence that the fourteenth-
century kings so used the dispensing and suspending
powers as to make Parliament fear for its statutes. How
consciously they did this to fight Parliament it is hard to
tell. The dispensing power, which was then the more
common, was in the eyes of Parliament, as truly an in-
vasion of their domain as the making of a new writ in
Chancery or the extension of the jurisdiction of the Coun-
cil.1 It was often used in the reign of Edward III.
practically to license crime, pardons being given before
the accused were brought to trial; and the character of
the crimes, of which the king seems often to have known
little, discredited it still further. Attempts were made by
the Commons in 1328,* 1330, 3 1347, and 1351 to do away
with the abuse, but, despite promises by the king, it
continued. Under Richard II., a statute was passed for-
bidding the issue of pardons in the case of serious crimes,
unless they specified the nattfre of the crime and contained
the name of the culprit. This principle, although often
violated, has remained in the law of pardons. At the
end of the century, nothing had been done to regulate the
dispensing power outside the matter of pardons, and it con-
tinued a vague and dangerous factor in the royal prero-
gative. The suspending power was then seldom used, but I
in it lay even greater possibilities of despotic action.
Since statutes usually began as petitions, it was neces-
sary in engrossing the granted petition as a law, putting it
'See above, pp. 213, 214 and note 2, 220, 221, 300, 301.
* A. and S., document 56. * Ibid., document 57.