[Sidenote:  The Good Parliament]

But the temper of the Parliament which met in 1376, and which gained from after times the name of the Good Parliament, shows that these precautions had utterly failed.  Even their promise to pillage the Church had failed to win for the Duke and his party the good will of the lesser gentry or the wealthier burgesses who together formed the Commons.  Projects of wide constitutional and social change, of the humiliation and impoverishment of an estate of the realm, were profoundly distasteful to men already struggling with a social revolution on their own estates and in their own workshops.  But it was not merely its opposition to the projects of Lancaster and his party among the baronage which won for this assembly the name of the Good Parliament.  Its action marked a new period in our Parliamentary history, as it marked a new stage in the character of the national opposition to the misrule of the Crown.  Hitherto the task of resistance had devolved on the baronage, and had been carried out through risings of its feudal tenantry.  But the misgovernment was now that of the baronage or of a main part of the baronage itself in actual conjunction with the Crown.  Only in the power of the Commons lay any adequate means of peaceful redress.  The old reluctance of the Lower House to meddle with matters of State was roughly swept away therefore by the pressure of the time.  The Black Prince, anxious to secure his child’s succession by the removal of John of Gaunt, the prelates with William of Wykeham at their head, resolute again to take their place in the royal councils and to check the projects of ecclesiastical spoliation put forward by their opponents, alike found in it a body to oppose to the Duke’s administration.  Backed by powers such as these, the action of the Commons showed none of their old timidity or self-distrust.  The presentation of a hundred and forty petitions of grievances preluded a bold attack on the royal Council.  “Trusting in God, and standing with his followers before the nobles, whereof the chief was John Duke of Lancaster, whose doings were ever contrary,” their speaker, Sir Peter de la Mare, denounced the mis-management of the war, the oppressive taxation, and demanded an account of the expenditure.  “What do these base and ignoble knights attempt?” cried John of Gaunt.  “Do they think they be kings or princes of the land?” But the movement was too strong to be stayed.  Even the Duke was silenced by the charges brought against the ministers.  After a strict enquiry Latimer and Lyons were alike thrown into prison, Alice Perrers was banished, and several of the royal servants were driven from the Court.  At this moment the death of the Black Prince shook the power of the Parliament.  But it only heightened its resolve to secure the succession.  His son, Richard of Bordeaux, as he was called from the place of his birth, was now a child of but ten years old; and it was known that doubts were whispered