The establishment of the obligation instantly to submit the question to the judgment of Parliament will hardly be denied to be a sufficient safeguard against the ministerial abuse of such a power; and the instances in which such a power has since been exercised, coupled with the sanction of such exercise by Parliament, are a practical approval and ratification by subsequent Parliaments of the course that was now adopted.[23] The next year a not very creditable job of the ministry led to the enactment of a statute of great importance to all holders of property which had ever belonged to the crown.

In the twenty-first year of James I.a bill had been passed giving a secure tenure of their estates to all grantees of crown lands whose possession of them had lasted sixty years.
The Houses had desired to make the enactment extend to all future as well as to all previous grants.

But to this James had refused to consent; and, telling the Houses that "beggars must not be choosers," he had compelled them to content themselves with a retrospective statute.
Since his time, and especially in the reigns of Charles II.

and William III., the crown had been more lavish and unscrupulous than at any former period in granting away its lands and estates to favorites.

And no one had been so largely enriched by its prodigality as the most grasping of William's Dutch followers, Bentinck, the founder of the English house of Portland.