or prelates, who only represented themselves. Increasingly, the agreement of the Commons was necessary for the levy of all taxes: peers could give such consent personally, whereas the Commons were proxies for the bulk of the population. During the reign of Richard II, prominent members of the House of Lancaster wished to play up the importance of the Commons, compared to that of the Lords, prelates and magnates, and to legitimate processes in the Commons to depose a king who had lost the support of the people. The Modus was helpful to them in its emphasis on the representative power of the Commons: "We must understand that two Knights which come to the Parliament for the Shires and County out of which they come have a greater voice in Parliament to grant, than the greatest Earl in England". Maddicott offers a concise summary of the document's significance: "About the precise functions and powers of the commons the author of the Modus was, so far as we can see, often wrong. But about their general weight and position he was not so far out ... It is not hard to envisage the sort of body which it had in mind playing its part in the deposition of a king". In a major political crisis in Ireland in 1418–19, the veteran statesman Christopher Preston, 2nd Baron Gormanston, was accused of treason, largely on account of his ownership of a copy of the document. He was quickly released and restored to favour, apparently after explaining that he had simply found it among his father's papers and thought it worth keeping. This copy was itself copied onto the patent roll of the Irish Chancery. See also Constitution of the United Kingdom House of Plantagenet Notes Bibliography External links 14th-century documents 14th century in England Medieval Latin texts Parliament of England Parliamentary procedure