THE RISE OF PARLIAMENT

The origins of Parliament is to be found in the Great Council, the feudal court of the
King, which was attended by his tenants in chief – archbishops, bishops, abbots,
earls, and greater barons. Attendance was part of their feudal duty. The King could
summon them whenever he pleased. About the middle of the 13th century the
meetings of the Great Council began to be called parliaments, a word that at this time
meant merely a “parley”, a talking together, a meeting at which there was conference
or debate. At these meetings, the King and the great men of the kingdom talked
about matters of high importance, and transacted various kinds of business. The
barons thought of themselves as representing the nation as a whole, as speaking for
the community of the realm. Thus, their decisions were binding upon the community
as a whole. The heart and the centre of medieval parliaments were the King and his
small council of judges and administrators - thus, Parliament was well equipped for
judicial work and it was the supreme court of the kingdom. It had other uses too.
Edward I promulgated his statutes there, the members of Parliament advised the
King and supplied information upon which better government could be based.
Parliament also consented to taxations. The King, it was held, could not alter the law
or levy extraordinary taxes without the consent of the magnates.

During the course of the 13th century the King began to summon
representatives from the middle classes to meet with him and with the barons in
Parliament, but the growth of this practice was rather slow. The middle classes in the
counties were the knights an country gentlemen whose ancestors had obtained their
lands as small tenants in chief or as vassals of the greater barons. By the 13th
century these knights and gentry had become less warlike and more interested in the
management of their property. The middle class also included the wealthier
burgesses in the towns, men who controlled the guilds, and governed the boroughs.
These knights country gentlemen and burgesses were elected but we do not know
much about these elections. We know that they were neither popular nor democratic.
The sheriff, who was in charge of carrying out the election, often exercised great
influence, since names were proposed in a loud voice and accepted by acclamation.
Moreover, the local lords with a body of retainers, their private army, usually
influenced electors. The elections in the boroughs were often controlled by the
wealthy merchants and industrialists who dominated the guilds and the town
governments. Of course, the members of the nobility were not elected; they received
personal invitations to attend Parliament from the King.

When the king wished to investigate local conditions, he found it convenient to

summon representatives of various localities to meet with his officials. Edward I
occasionally summoned the members of the middle classes merely because their
presence helped him to get things done. In 1295, however, under pressing need for
money, he summoned a Parliament which was the largest of medieval Parliaments. It
is often called the Model Parliament because it contained all the classes found in
later medieval Parliaments.
 In these assemblies, the role of the knights and burgesses was largely
passive. They were often mere observers who might be asked to grant taxes (they
were prospering in the economy of the High Middle Ages), but were then dismissed,
while the barons remained in session to transact other business. During the reign of
Edward II, knights and burgesses were recognized as normal members of
Parliament.

Edward III’s constant need for money for his wars especially in France gave
Parliament an opportunity to develop rapidly and it was in this reign that Parliament
assumed its historic structure of Lords and Commons (in the 14th century). The
spiritual Lords or Lords Spiritual (the upper clergy), and the temporal lords (the
magnates and great barons) naturally acted together as an aristocracy, receiving
individual summons and holding land directly from the King. The lower clergy soon
dropped out and the vital questions remained whether the knights would join with the
lords or the burgesses. Knights and burgesses bore the heaviest burden of taxation
and had a common interest in resisting demands for money. They also discovered
that the grievances (problems) and abuses they wished to be redressed (put right)
were of the same general nature. By 1339, knights and burgesses were acting
together, and henceforth they formed a single body. This union was of the utmost
importance. Without it the burgesses would have remained in a position of permanent
subordination, but knights and burgesses acting together had some hope of
defending their interests against the King and aristocracy.

By the end of the 14th century the Commons had obtained control of taxation
(remember they bore the heaviest burden of taxation), which gave them power to
bargain with the King for the redress of grievances which normally precede the voting
of supplies of money. (A grievance is something wrong, and to redress it means
putting it right or finding a solution to it.) In 1376 we find the first case of
impeachment. In this procedure the Commons, acting as a body, placed accusations
against corrupt officials before the Lords, who acted as a court of law to try the
ministers in question. Impeachment gave the Commons power, not to control the
selection of ministers, but to attack those who broke the law. The Commons also
gained some share in legislation when they obtained the right of common petition
backed by the whole body of that House. If the Lords assented and if the King
accepted the petition, it could be thrown into the form of a statute and become the
law of the land: that means the right to initiate legislation. The influence of the
Commons must not be exaggerated, but their progress in the 14 th century was
impressive.

Adapted from A History of England by D. H. Willson