176 TAXES AND CONTRIBUTIONS. 



twelve landholders whose yearly income should be that of 

 a knight's fee, and that if the sheriff fail in any particular he 

 be liable to a penalty of 200. These facts were laid before 

 Parliament on Nov. 9, 1450, and the petition was granted 1 . 



The Parliament which met, to judge from the Speaker whom 

 they elected, was far less compliant than that which was sum- 

 moned in the previous year to Leicester, and sat till Cade's 

 insurrection broke out. Sir William Oldhall, knight, of Herts, 

 who a few years later was attainted for having been an accom- 

 plice of Cade, was Speaker. It limited the assessment of the pre- 

 vious year to persons having forty shillings in freehold or copyhold 

 lands, and to the holders of offices to the amount of 3 and 

 upwards in annual value, and thus appears to have lessened the 

 grant made by Tresham. It was prorogued from the i8th 

 Dec. to Jan. 20, from thence to April 19, and afterwards to 

 May 5. It presented a petition requiring the dismissal of the 

 Duke of Somerset, Alice Duchess Dowager of Suffolk, Booth 

 Bishop of Lichfield, Sutton Lord Dudley, Lord Hastings, Sir 

 Thomas Stanley, Sir Edmund Hungerford, and twenty-three 

 others, who were principally employed in the household, and 

 prayed for an order that they should not come within twelve 

 miles of the court, on pain of forfeiting goods and lands, and 

 that they should lose all fees and wages from Dec. i, 1451. 

 The Parliament also enacts a resumption with the same pre- 

 amble and the same exceptions as those of the year before, and 

 concludes its labours with a petition that as the treasons of the 

 Duke of Suffolk were sufficiently notorious, they should be 

 accepted as proved, and that all the consequences of attainder 

 should follow in his case. The king refused the petition. 



I cannot but see, in my estimate of Tresham and his times, 

 in the crime that cut short this great Speaker's career, and in 

 the strong confidence which his widow expresses in her petition 

 to the Crown that the gentlemen of Northamptonshire would 

 avenge his memory, that the loss of Tresham's life was one of 

 the most serious calamities which happened to political parties 



1 For the fortunes of Tresham's grandson see Rot. Parl. vi. 317. 



