[Footnote 290.1: [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.]
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