Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 3.djvu/357

Rh crown itself is limited in its interference with the equal course of justice, its powers being confined, by the terms of the royal oath, to granting charters of pardon for offenders. The criminal law was much amended by these and other regulations; aristocratic influence in gaol-deliveries was checked; the common rights of the people were carefully respected. Nor is it undeserving observation that in abolishing those mercantile monopolies which had sprung up in the late reigns, how clearly the parliament understood their injurious tendency, whilst, to shew how repugnant it thought them to be to the earlier theory of the constitution, the present statute allowed "merchants, strangers, and others to go and come with their merchandise into England after the tenor of the Great Charter" of the 17th of John. So jealously watched and guarded indeed was the freedom of commerce during Edward III.'s reign, that, independently of the present statute, a full recognition of its unfettered principles was set forth in the preamble and first clause of the tenth parliament held at York, (9th Edward III. 1335.) It would be opening the subject far too wide were I to mention in this enquiry the various occasions when royalty visited the town of Northampton, and I have merely noticed the foregoing incident, amongst many, to shew how frequent those visits formerly were, and to furnish some kind of idea of the business habits of the period, and the simple modes of regal life. The parliament opened its sittings on April 24th, and did not conclude them until the 21st of May, during the whole of which time Edward III. remained here.

In the twelfth year of his reign, when the third parliament assembled at Northampton, we find him actively engaged in prosecuting his claims upon the kingdom of Philip of Valois; and in pursuing this favourite object of his ambition he spent much of the early period of his life on the continent. He was now on the eve of embarking upon one of these expeditions, but previously to his departure he addressed writs to the usual persons, informing them that he had appointed Edward his eldest son keeper of the realm during his absence, and summoned them to attend a great council at Northampton on the morrow after St. James the Apostle, (July 20, 1338.) The writs were tested on the 15th of June, and the parliament was duly convened at the appointed time; the king himself, however, sailed for the continent a few days before