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.