the throne, the principle was indisputably established that no man ought to be taxed without his own consent, though there were almost insuperable difficulties in the way of maintaining this right if the king chose to ignore it; and that the most convenient and satisfactory way of obtaining the con sent of the realm on the subject of taxation was by summoning some form of representative council on the model of that assembled by Earl Simon in 1265, though the exact form was as yet a matter of considerable uncertainty. Thus it is evident that it depended in no small measure on the character of the king whether the principle would be allowed any active vitality. It was, therefore, extremely fortunate that Edward I. was essentially a lawyer, with a lawyer's respect for forms and precedents, a man utterly intolerant of any uncertainty or vagueness in legal matters, with a real delight in his necessary task of defining and fixing, and, so to speak, crystallizing the formless, almost half-liquid, institutions of which the administrative system was composed, preferring to act invariably in a regular and formal manner, and considering himself as much bound by his own acts as any modern judge of the Queen's Bench would be by his own decisions. It is difficult to praise him much without really overrating him, and yet to decry or depreciate him is to do him less than justice. He intended undoubtedly to fix the Constitution on a firm basis, he intended to build up a strong and good government; but he certainly did not intend the government he actually created, far less to impose so many restrictions on the royal power. It seems almost as though he had a hobby for arranging things in boxes and pigeonholes, with dockets and labels, hardly realizing that he was dealing, not with inert masses of matter, but with chemical bodies, which, if rashly brought together, would perhaps unite to form a new substance of unknown properties that might destroy its own creator, if incautiously handled. Therefore, while fully crediting Edward with the great work that he had actually completed-namely, the formation of a constitutional monarchy-it is impossible to admit that he intended to create more than an orderly despotism. Circumstances, however, were too strong for him. Men and institutions refused alike to obey his will to the full; some

times they moved farther than he had designed, sometimes they stopped half-way, and stood, like Atlas, unremoved, defiant of coercion. So in the end he found, perhaps, with some faint tinge of the feeling which oppressed the unhappy Frankenstein, that instead of the mere machine he had projected, he had created an organic being, instinct with vigorous life, which could act independently of its creator's will with superhuman strength that mocked his own.

As might be expected, Edward did not long leave the National Council in the uncertain, shapeless state in which he found it, halting undecidedly between the Constitutions of 1215 and 1265. Like everything else which he handled, he soon impressed it with a definite stamp, which, with slight modifications, it still bears at the present day. It is this which entitles Edward to the credit of the formation of Parliament.

At first, however, matters are terribly vague. It is not until 1282 that we can speak with any certainty, and then it becomes clear that Edward has at last realized the convenience of summoning representatives from the country to speak in the name of the people and grant him money. This tardy awakening was due to the large expenses of the Welsh war and the utterly inadequate amount of the ordinary feudal revenue. It became necessary to ask for a general grant on movable property, and this could be best done in some really representative National Council. The result was, that between 1282 and 1294, Edward devised a variety of experiments, none of which appear to have satisfied him so well as that which is recorded in the year 1295, the result being that the latter ultimately formed the model on which future Parliaments were moulded.

The first experiment was of an extremely singular nature. In 1282 the National Council met in three divisions at three different places; and each division acted, to all intents and purposes, independently of the others. This expedient was prompted partly by necessity, partly by convenience, partly no doubt by the hope of lessening the chances of resistance. The barons, in fact, were with the king in Wales; it was, therefore, impossible for them to be present at a Parliament held in England; it was equally impossible to hold it at the

seat of war. By appointing two meeting-places for the rest of the realm, the king certainly lessened the inconvenience and expense for those summoned to attend; while by dividing the resistance, he undoubtedly diminished at once the probability and the strength of it. The towns appointed in the summons were York and Northampton; and to them were summoned the higher clergy, the representatives of the lower clergy, four knights from each shire, and two representatives from each borough and market town. In this Parliament we get a glimpse of an idea which was peculiarly Edward's own-the representation of the lower clergy in Parliament-but which was destined to failure owing to the stubborn opposition of the clergy themselves. In 1283 another anomalous assembly was summoned to Shrewsbury, including the barons, prelates, two knights from each shire, and two representatives apiece from twenty-one specified cities and boroughs; the representatives of the lower clergy were not summoned on this occasion. In 1290 a purely feudal assembly of bishops and barons was summoned to impose an aid which fell solely on the tenants-in-chief, and therefore might be supposed to lie within the competence of such a council. Later in the year, however, it was reinforced by the addition of two knights from each shire, no doubt in order that it might confer a more general grant of a fifteenth of all movables. There is no distinct record that representatives were present at the Parliaments of 1292, 1293, though they may have been. In 1294, however, to a great Parliament assembled in October at Westminster, Edward summoned, in addition to the magnates, four knights from each shire.

In 1295, however, he went further. Stating definitely as the grounds of his action that "what affected all should have the consent of all," he called together a complete representative assembly of all the estates of the realm, based primarily on the model of the Council of 1265. The barons and higher clergy were summoned individually by special writs addressed to each personally. The bishops' summons wound up with an injunction (the premunientes clause) that they should cause the lower clergy to elect proctors to represent them in Parliament. General writs, moreover, were ad

dressed to the sheriffs, ordering them to procure the election of two knights for their shire, and two citizens, or burgesses, for every city or borough within their shire. This assembly differed materially from all that had preceded it; it formed a model on which subsequent Parliaments were based; and it is this fact which has earned for it the name of the Model Parliament. For though many anomalous assemblies were held at intervals after this date, and the parliamentary representation of the lower clergy became in a very short time a dead letter, yet the assembly of 1295 undoubtedly was a pattern to which the later custom of Parliament conformed, as a rule, in all essential points of summons, constitution, and forms of proceeding. In the opinion of Dr. Stubbs, that year established such a precedent that no assembly subsequent to that date can be regarded as a Parliament at all unless it conforms in the minutest details to the rules then laid down.

It is as well to notice, however, that though the fiat of the Bishop of Chester has fixed the date of the first Parliament at the year 1295, yet the term "Parliament " itself is far older than that date, and had no special technical meaning to contemporary historians. To them it simply meant a palaver, or talking assembly, and was a word of Italian origin, used as the translation of colloquium. It was frequently employed by the chroniclers of the thirteenth century to designate assemblies far different in constitution from a Parliament in the legal sense of the term, and among others it was applied to the council appointed by the barons at Oxford, 1258. The earliest recorded use of the expression is in the year 1246. For the future, however, it will be used with the special significance ascribed to it by Dr. Stubbs, that of a representative assembly modelled more or less exactly on the pattern of the Parliament of 1295.

CHAPTER II.

FORMATION OF PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT.

(1295-1460.)

SECTION 1.-Historical Survey.

ALMOST the first act of Parliament, when it was once definitely established on its present constitutional basis, was to assert its right to that control of the purse which was to prove its most irresistible instrument in the future. Unusual demands on the part of Edward I. for warlike purposes, in 1296, at last provoked the opposition of the barons, which was backed up by the support of the whole realm. Finally, Edward was compelled to grant in Parliament, 1297, a statute (the Confirmatio Cartarum)* which consisted of a reissue and confirmation of Magna Carta, and the Forest Charter, and some additional clauses intended to deprive the Crown of the power of arbitrary taxation which it had enIdeavored to assume. The addition of these provisions was equivalent to a reinsertion in fuller detail of the constitutional clauses which had been omitted in the reissues of the Charter in the year 1216 and onwards. This statute forms an imperfect recognition of the great principle which was by this time thoroughly established and understood, that no taxes ought to be levied without the consent of the nation expressed by the National Council. For nearly a century more, however, the fact was not fully comprehended by the king, and the imperfect nature of the prohibitions contained in the Confirmatio left ample room for raising money in ways which, though clearly against the spirit, did not exactly violate the letter of the law. For nearly a century, therefore, Parliament was occupied with remedial statutes, stopping up a loophole here, strengthening a weak place there,

*The knights of the shire represented the Commons in this Parliament.