8 INTRODUCTORY. 



The King took energetic means to check this disorder. Scropc 

 was executed by a military tribunal, to the amazement and 

 horror of the religious world. But the sedition was crushed, 

 and Henry, who had anticipated the pardon of his offence by 

 conceding the writ de heretico comburendo to the clergy, in the 

 second year of his reign, had little difficulty in a transaction 

 which fifty years before would have set the whole kingdom 

 ablaze. But more than fifty years after the transaction, the 

 execution of Scrope was remembered to the injury of the House 

 of Lancaster in the province of York. The narrative of the 

 Archbishop's passion was told by Gascoigne 1 , and has been 

 incorporated into history from that source. 



The economical history of Henry the Fourth's reign con- 

 tains few events. The discontent felt at the opulence of the 

 Church increased, and the House of Commons fully represented 

 the national feeling. In the year 1406, the electoral franchise 

 was declared to reside in all suitors at the County Court, and 

 others. It is impossible to doubt that this definition of the 

 electoral franchise was exceedingly inclusive, and that it com- 

 prised tenants under any kind of holding. Such at least is the 

 reflection of the House of Commons in 1430, when the vote 

 was limited to those who had a freehold estate of forty shillings 

 yearly above all charges, and by residents therein, a limitation 

 which was further restrained, two years later, by the rule that 

 the freehold must be in the same county. That the franchise 

 was greatly restricted by the Act of 1430 is manifest from the 

 intention of those who passed the Act, and is further illustrated 

 by the comparatively colourless character of the later Parlia- 

 ments in the Plantagenet period, except when anger or hope 

 was greatly excited. 



It is said that in order to divert further discontent from the 

 Church, Archbishop Chicheley counselled Henry's son to make 

 such demands on France as would necessarily be followed by 

 war. But we are told that Henry the Fifth suppressed the alien 

 priories, and vested their estates and revenues in the Crown, 



1 See Loci e Libro Veritatum, p. 225. 



