That of Treason in 1352 defined that crime and its penalties.
That of the Staples in 1353 regulated the conditions of foreign trade and the privileges of the merchant gilds which conducted it.

But side by side with these exertions of influence we note a series of steady encroachments by the Crown on the power of the Houses.

If their petitions were granted, they were often altered in the royal ordinance which professed to embody them.

A plan of demanding supplies for three years at once rendered the annual assembly of Parliament less necessary.

Its very existence was threatened by the convocation in 1352 and 1353 of occasional councils with but a single knight from every shire and a single burgess from a small number of the greater towns, which acted as Parliament and granted subsidies.
[Sidenote: The Baronage and the Church] What aided Edward above all in eluding or defying the constitutional restrictions on arbitrary taxation, as well as in these more insidious attempts to displace the Parliament, was the lessening of the check which the Baronage and the Church had till now supplied.