it was only slowly and under the pressure of one necessity after another that the Commons took a growing part in public affairs.  Their primary business was with taxation, and here they stood firm against the evasions by which the king still managed to baffle their exclusive right of granting supplies by voluntary agreements with the merchants of the Staple.  Their steady pressure at last obtained in 1362 an enactment that no subsidy should henceforth be set upon wool without assent of Parliament, while Purveyance was restricted by a provision that payments should be made for all things taken for the king’s use in ready money.  A hardly less important advance was made by the change of Ordinances into Statutes.  Till this time, even when a petition of the Houses was granted, the royal Council had reserved to itself the right of modifying its form in the Ordinance which professed to embody it.  It was under colour of this right that so many of the provisions made in Parliament had hitherto been evaded or set aside.  But the Commons now met this abuse by a demand that on the royal assent being given their petitions should be turned without change into Statutes of the Realm and derive force of law from their entry on the Rolls of Parliament.  The same practical sense was seen in their dealings with Edward’s attempt to introduce occasional smaller councils with parliamentary powers.  Such an assembly in 1353 granted a subsidy on wool.  The Parliament which met in the following year might have challenged its proceedings as null and void, but the Commons more wisely contented themselves with a demand that the ordinances passed in the preceding assembly should receive the sanction of the Three Estates.  A precedent for evil was thus turned into a precedent for good, and though irregular gatherings of a like sort were for a while occasionally held they were soon seen to be fruitless and discontinued.  But the Commons long shrank from meddling with purely administrative matters.  When Edward in his anxiety to shift from himself the responsibility of the war referred to them in 1354 for advice on one of the numerous propositions of peace, they referred him to the lords of his Council.  “Most dreaded lord,” they replied, “as to this war and the equipment needful for it we are so ignorant and simple that we know not how nor have the power to devise.  Wherefore we pray your Grace to excuse us in this matter, and that it please you with the advice of the great and wise persons of your Council to ordain what seems best for you for the honour and profit of yourself and of your kingdom.  And whatsoever shall be thus ordained by assent and agreement on the part of you and your Lords we readily assent to and will hold it firmly established.”

[Sidenote:  Baronage attacks the Church]