Faction, prerogative and the common profit of the realm in the Good Parliament

Parliaments of the last quarter of the fourteenth century, very much in line with England’s general political situation, were often rambunctious affairs. However, Walsingham's account of the Good Parliament presents historians with a second problem, one that cannot be quite so easily dismissed: his deep and professed personal antipathy for the duke of Lancaster. Mark Ormrod and others have suggested that political language provides a window into the Good Parliament's self-conception, and that means above all else gauging the importance of the relatively new phrase 'common profit of the realm'. Indicative of rising expectations on the part of the Commons, concern over the common profit of the realm was in the process of replacing the older 'common weal', which itself sought to set a minimal framework of security. The employment of the term 'common profit of the realm' by the Good Parliament might of course have been lexical sophistry, not at all indicative of any real change in thinking.