The progress made under the earlier Plantagenets had gone as steadily on under Henry the Fourth and his successors.

The Commons had continued their advance.

Not only had the right of self-taxation and of the initiation of laws been explicitly yielded to them, but they had interfered with the administration of the state, had directed the application of subsidies, and called royal ministers to account by repeated instances of impeachment.

Under the first two kings of the House of Lancaster Parliament had been summoned almost every year.
Under Henry the Sixth an important step was made in constitutional progress by abandoning the old custom of presenting the requests of Parliament in the form of petitions which were subsequently moulded into statutes by the royal Council.

The statute itself in its final shape was now presented for the royal assent and the Crown deprived of all opportunity of modifying it.