Speech from the throne policies and objectives. The monarch would sometimes speak to parliament in person; King Edward III (in 1365), Richard II, and Edward IV (to both houses of parliament on multiple separate occasions) did so. However, various other figures gave the oration on the sovereign's behalf: between 1347 and 1363, it was read by the Chief Justice; by the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1401; the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1344, 1368, 1377 (speaking for a presiding Edward III), 1399, and 1422; and in 1343, 1363, and, usually after 1368, by the Lord Chancellor—who was then the Prolocutor, or chairman
Gilbert Denys William Dennis in 1701, last of the male line. Following Gaunt's death in 1399, Denys joined the retinue of Edmund, Earl of Stafford(d.1403), and probably fought with the Earl in Henry IV's campaign against the Scots in 1400. In 1403 he was appointed by the King as constable of the late Earl of Stafford's Newport Castle, Monmouth, in charge of 80 archers and 40 lances, specifically to resist the rebellion of Glendower. Having been discouraged from attacking nearby Chepstow Castle, a far larger fortification, Glendower turned his force on Newport, which Denys's force was clearly unable to resist, for the