confirmation of legal provisions going back to the Statute of Marl-
borough and the baronial legislation of 1258–9.^152 By the end of the
fourteenth century many petitions would be addressed to the Commons
rather than to the king, who would eventually send bills of his own to
be passed through parliament, though the royal will remained the essen-
tial element in giving agreed remedies statutory force.^153
(^152) RPii. 7–12; cf. i. 350b, and Sayles, Functions of the Medieval Parliament, 333.
(^153) G. O. Sayles, The King’s Parliament of England (London, 1975), 116–19; A. R. Myers,
‘Parliament, 1422–1509’, in The English Parliament in the Middle Ages, ed. Davies and
Denton, 179–80; G. R. Elton, Reform and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common
Weal (Cambridge UP, 1973), ch. 4, ‘The Instrument’.
190 New High Courts and Reform of the Regime