Parliament 435
observe the common law and the statutes, and much about
economy in administration and the king's household.1
For a time in the reign of Henry IV., king, Council, and
Parliament worked together in an astonishing, if some-
what artificial, harmony.
Notwithstanding this activity in holding ministers
responsible, it so happened that, after the reign of Richard
r II., Parliament found few occasions to exercise its power
f of impeachment until the notable case of the Duke of
Suffolk in 1449. But during the rapidly changing Parlia-
ments in the period of civil war and bitter personal ani-
mosities immediately following, the judicial procedure of
impeachment was found too slow in dealing with political
enemies. BiUs^ofjttta^i^.er (also called acts of pains and
penalties) came into use, and untiljLjSax. there was not
another impeachment. These bills were a variety of the
private bills growing out of the individual petitions which
Parliament entertained, and like all such were partly
legislative and partly judicial in character. They con-
tained the accusation and provided for the punishment of
the persons against whom they were instituted, and were
introduced and passed like other bills.3 Thus there was
no need, as in impeachment, to bring in evidence or go
- through the forms of court procedure. The man^dharged
in the bill was -condemned unheard,. The courts, as was
natural, came to look a^aHce^/TtEese acts, but dared not
directly impugn the doings of the High Court of Parlia-
ment. Sometimes bills of attainder were useful in deal-
ing with powerful misdoers, the nature of whose offences
made it hard to furnish evidence at all satisfactory to a
tribunal which regarded itself as strictly a court of law.
But punishing men by legislation has, for the most part,
been an abuse, whether as in the Yorkist period, a means
1 For the provision quoted and a summary of the articles, see Taswell-
, Langmead, English Constitutional History, pp. 296-298.
a On the origin of Bills of Attainder, see Stubbs, Constitutional History,
§371; Pike, Constitutional History of the House of Lords, p. 229; Anson,
Law and Custom of the Constitution, i, 337; Medley, English Constitutional
History, pp. 176, 177.