** Brady's App. No. 50. Heming. vol. i. p. 247., Walsing. p. 97.,Ryley, p. 526.
The barons, in return signed a declaration, in which they acknowledged that they owed these concessions merely to the king's free grace; promised that this commission should never be drawn into precedent; and engaged that the power of the ordainers should expire at the time appointed.[*]
{ 1311.} The chosen junto accordingly framed their ordinances, and presented them to the king and parliament, for their confirmation in the ensuing year. Some of these ordinances were laudable, and tended to the regular execution of justice; such as those requiring sheriffs to be men of property, abolishing the practice of issuing privy seals for the suspension of justice, restraining the practice of purveyance, prohibiting the adulteration and alteration of the coin, excluding foreigners from the farms of the revenue, ordering all payments to be regularly made into the exchequer, revoking all late grants of the crown, and giving the parties damages in the case of vexatious prosecutions. But what chiefly grieved the king was the ordinance for the removal of evil counsellors, by which a great number of persons were by name excluded from every office of power and profit; and Piers Gavaston himself was forever banished the king's dominions, under the penalty, in case of disobedience, of being declared a public enemy. Other persons, more agreeable to the barons, were substituted in all the offices. And it was ordained that, for the future, all the considerable dignities in the household, as well as by the law, revenue, and military governments, should be appointed by the baronage in parliament; and the power of making war, or assembling his military tenants, should no longer be vested solely in the king, nor be exercised without the consent of the nobility.
Edward, from the same weakness both in his temper and situation which had engaged him to grant this unlimited commission to the barons, was led to give a parliamentary sanction to their ordinances; but as a consequence of the same character, he secretly made a protest against them, and declared that, since the commission was granted only for the making of ordinances to the advantage of king and kingdom, such articles as should be found prejudicial to both, were to be held as not ratified and confirmed.[**]