It was not merely that the exhaustion of the treasury by the war and revolt which followed Henry's accession left him even more than the kings who had gone before in the hands of the Estates; it was that his very right to the Crown lay in an acknowledgement of their highest pretensions.

He had been raised to the throne by a Parliamentary revolution.

His claim to obedience had throughout to rest on a Parliamentary title.

During no period of our early history therefore were the powers of the two Houses so frankly recognized.

The tone of Henry the Fourth till the very close of his reign is that of humble compliance in all but ecclesiastical matters with the prayers of the Parliament, and even his imperious successor shrank almost with timidity from any conflict with it.