Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 3.djvu/354

324 arrangements for the funeral of his father. Whatever amount of incapacity or moral obloquy may have attached itself to the character of Edward of Caernarvon, it can scarcely be said that filial affection was a virtue in which he was deficient. The performance, however, of the melancholy solemnities so naturally due to the memory of the late king, was not the sole reason for parliament meeting so immediately after his death, since the writs, our chief source of information, (the rolls of its proceedings having, like most of those of the reign, become lost,) further mention, as subjects for discussion, the new sovereign's coronation, and his espousals with Isabella of France. There was another latent motive for its convocation, one involving more important political rights. The active reign just ended had left the young prince surrounded with difficulties, against which he was in every way unequal to contend. The discontentment of his barons, the increasing demands of the pope, the long and expensive wars in which his ancestors had been engaged, now bequeathed as a legacy upon his impoverished exchequer, had to be provided for, not as formerly from the private revenues of the crown, but to be supported by extraordinary grants from the people. The personal resources of the king had gradually become lavished away, and we thus trace the earliest causes of the diminishing power of the royal prerogative, as well as the subsequent influence of the national voice in regulating taxation. The three estates of parliament assembled at Northampton on the 13th of October, four months before the king was actually crowned, and did not entirely separate until the beginning of the following year. It was in the twenty-fifth year of the preceding reign, about twelve years before this time, that the laws exacting pecuniary aids from the subject, first became clearly defined: nevertheless they continued for a length of