TAXES AND CONTRIBUTIONS. 



the Church, was rejected, and the whole matter referred to 

 the hierarchy. 



In the meantime, the possessions of the king in France 

 were lost. The Norman towns capitulated, and Guienne was 

 overrun. The issue of all this long effort, this ceaseless expense, 

 and the overwhelming debts of the crown, was the extinction 

 of all hopes that the ancient fame of the English arms could 

 recover possession of the French provinces. The queen was 

 supposed to be the primary cause of these calamities. She was 

 credited with the murder of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, 

 whose numerous faults were forgotten in his arrest and sus- 

 picious death at Bury, and in his stubborn defence of the 

 foreign policy which had been conceived by Henry of Mori- 

 mouth. Somerset was in France, York in Ireland. But the 

 hateful Duke of Suffolk was in England, and on him the 

 vengeance of an angry and disappointed people would be 

 taken. In such a frame of mind, the Parliament being largely 

 composed of new men, as we learn from the list, Sir John 

 Popham, member for Hants, was elected Speaker. He seems 

 to have been a new member, though an old man, and excused 

 himself on the ground of feeble health, and long service in 

 the king's wars. The House then elected William Tresham 

 for the fourth time. This personage, as we shall see below, 

 was a member of the king's household. His son was Speaker 

 of the Coventry Parliament of 1459. was knighted, was an ener- 

 getic Lancastrian, took part in the battle of Towton, and was 

 attainted, with many others, by i Ed. IV, though restored in 

 the Parliament of 7, 8 Ed. IV. The family then, in an age 

 when blood feuds were particularly ferocious, could not be 

 charged with any disloyalty to the House of Lancaster, even 

 if, as there is no reason to think was the case, the rival claims 

 of Richard of York had ever been whispered. 



The Speaker of the House of Commons was the finance 



Tresham's colleague in the representation of Northants was the famous Thomas 

 Thorpe, the Lancastrian partisan, who became Speaker in 1453, and was imprisoned at 

 the Duke of York's prosecution. 



