Note 290.1 — THE PASTON LETTERS Henry VI (continued 6)

[From Fenn, iii. 108.] This paper is headed ‘Copia’ in the MS. It is entitled by Fenn, ‘The Speech of John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, against Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, in the House of Lords.’ This title, however, is clearly no part of the original document, which has much more the character of a petition to the Privy Council than of a speech in Parliament. The paper itself professes to be a ‘bill’ signed by its author, who demands that the conduct of the Duke of Somerset in France and in England should be made the subject of investigation by separate tribunals according to the laws of either country. Now the House of Lords, being only a branch of the English Legislature, would have had no right to authorise a judicial investigation in France. The date of this petition must have been in the end of the year 1453, after the loss of Guienne. The Duke of Somerset appears to have been committed to the Tower a little before Christmas in that year; for, after his liberation on the 4th March 1455, he declared before the Council that he had been confined there ‘one whole year, ten weeks, and more.’—See Rymer, xi. 362.