The challenge was accepted: the time and place of combat were appointed: and as the event of this important trial by arms might require the interposition of legislative authority, the parliament thought it more suitable to delegate their power to a committee, than to prolong the session beyond the usual time which custom and general convenience had prescribed to it.[***] The duke of Hereford was certainly very little delicate in the point of honor, when he revealed a private conversation to the ruin of the person who had intrusted him; and we may thence be more inclined to believe the duke of Norfolk's denial, than the other's asseveration.

But Norfolk had in these transactions betrayed an equal neglect of honor, which brings him entirely on a level with his antagonist.

Though he had publicly joined with the duke of Glocester and his party in all the former acts of violence against the king.
** Cotton, p.372.Parl.Hist.

vol.i.p.

490.
*** In the first year of Henry VI., when the authority of parliament was great, and when that assembly could least be suspected of lying under violence, a like concession was made to the privy council from like motives of convenience.
See Cotton, p.564.his name stands among the appellants who accused the duke of Ireland and the other ministers, yet was he not ashamed publicly to impeach his former associates for the very crimes which he had concurred with them in committing; and his name increases the list of those appellants who brought them to a trial.