filling up with tireless patience the innumerable gaps and rents which the sword of the prerogative continually made in their financial armor. This tedious and disheartening process was, as it happened, considerably facilitated by the foreign wars of Edward III., which obliged him continually to apply to Parliament for large supplies of money, and enabled it to exact in return some legislative plug, or plate, or rivet to help on the work. It was also facilitated considerably by the haughty character and imperious views of Edward, who had not much intention of being bound by his promises against his will, and therefore had little objection to make them, provided his financial necessities were supplied for the time. Parliament, in fact, bought with hard cash a long series of statutes confirming, or conferring, a number of important rights, concessions, and privileges, the very frequency of which shows that they were perhaps not very effective individually and immediately, but which, taken collectively, formed a strong constitutional barrier against the undue exercise of prerogative in the future. By the end of Edward's reign precise declarations had been entered on the statute roll of the illegality of the various expedients by which the king had evaded the letters of the Charters, and in addition Parliament had established on a satisfactory basis the right to appropriate to particular purposes the sums which it granted, and to appoint auditors to examine the accounts of the expenditure of the appropriated money with the view of insuring its proper application to its destined end.

*

The right of the Commons to be consulted on taxation might seem to spring naturally from the fact that they were originally summoned for the express and sole purpose of voting money. The difficulties of the weak Edward II., and the necessities of the strong Edward III., and the consequent desire of both to conciliate their help in the hour of need, enabled them to make good their position as a body of equal power with the Lords-with an equal right to share in legislation, to advise and criticise the policy of the king, and to

* First instance of appropriation occurs in 1353, when a subsidy on wool was appropriated to the purposes of the French war.

First instance occurs in 1340.

rebuke and, if need be, punish, not only the lower, but even the highest personalities of the executive. Their right to concur in legislation was declared by statute in 1322, and their assent is invariably mentioned during the century; in fact, the statutes of the period are really the king's answers to the petitions of the Commons for redress of grievances, and are more or less drawn up on the lines of the petitions themselves. The king and Lords still retained some powers of issuing administrative laws in the shape of Ordinances, but these powers were only exercised for temporary needs or during the absence of Parliament. On several occasions the Commons are reported to have advised Edward III. on the subject of his wars with France and Scotland, and especially with regard to the conclusion of the Treaty of Brétigni. They interfered, moreover, in ecclesiastical matters, complaining bitterly of the conduct of the Papacy, and recommending remedial legislation. They also, at different times, severely criticised unpopular administrations, unsuccessful courses of policy, illegal proceedings at parliamentary elections, and a host of other dissimilar subjects, with almost the same restless activity which characterizes the House of Commons at the present day, with the important difference, however, as Sir Erskine May points out, that in the fourteenth century they had no means of enforcing their advice at the utmost they could only purchase compliance.

It was no doubt with the view of obtaining some indirect control over the actions of the king that the Commons insisted at intervals on their right to elect, or at least to share in the election of, the Privy Council, and further invented the powerful weapon of Impeachment as a punishment and warning to evil counsellors. It was during the unscrupulous and unsuccessful administration of John of Gaunt, at the close of his father's reign, that this engine was first brought into use. When Parliament met in 1376, the Commons, instigated and supported by the Black Prince, attacked the Government with a long list of complaints, demanded a reorganization of the Privy Council, and presented at the bar of the House of Lords articles of impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors against Lords Nevill and Latimer, both members of the Government, and several other offend

ers. The accused were thereupon tried by the Lords, and condemned. These vigorous measures of reform earned for its authors the title of "The Good Parliament."

The reign of Richard II. is the turning-point in the struggle between Parliament and the prerogative. All through the earlier years the Commons, aided by the weakness of his minority, continued to labor at the edifice of constitutional government. By frequent reassertion they secured, on a firm basis of precedent and custom, the rights established under Edward III., and obtained such an amount of control over the Privy Council that for some years, in the words of Hallam, "the whole executive government was transferred to the two Houses." At the close of the reign, however, an important crisis arose. Richard, relying on the help and acquiescence of a packed Parliament, established himself in a position of practical absolutism, and entered on a career of tyranny and extortion which soon alienated all classes of the nation. They rose in revolt, pulled down the pinchbeck despotism, and by the mouth of a full Parliament solemnly deposed the would-be despot, transferring the crown to Henry of Lancaster as the most suitable man of the Royal Family.

It was natural that a king whose sole title was that of election by Parliament, and whose earlier years were troubled by continual riot and insurrection, should be compelled to assume to a very large extent the position of constitutional monarch, marked out for him by the Commons. The old rights, therefore, were asserted and exercised with the regularity of routine, and completed by a few fresh improvements. The entire control of taxation was finally assured to the Commons by their successful assertion, in 1407, of the axiom that all money-bills must originate in the Lower House. Their right to concur in legislation was placed on a firmer footing by the practice introduced under Henry VI., of bringing in their petitions in the form of complete statutes, under the name of Bills, with the view of insuring that, for the future, the laws entered on the rolls of Parliament should correspond exactly to their desires. Shortly after the origin of this practice, the House of Lords also began to bring in Bills, which they afterwards sent to the Commons. The

kings, however, claimed the right of interfering with the full legislative powers of Parliament by means of the prerogative of dispensation. They claimed, in fact, the right of declaring that the law should not apply in particular cases; and though this power was in itself useful and almost necessary, it was of course subject to great abuses, and was naturally viewed with some jealousy by the Commons. Under the first two kings of the House of Lancaster, however, the powers of the two Houses were fully and frankly recognized, and there is no trace of even the slightest dissension between Henry V. and his Parliaments. Henry VI., during the earlier and happier part of his reign, was ruled by a council which, to a great extent, represented the Parliament, though the character of Parliament itself was changing, the Commons were ceasing to be really representative of the country, and all power was falling into the hands of a few great barons, who struggled for the supremacy in the council, just as later they were to struggle in the field. The intimate connection and real confidence existing between the House of Lancaster and their Parliaments was, perhaps, most conclusively shown by the creation of a permanent royal revenue in the shape of grants of the customs and of tonnage and poundage for life.

During this period the constitutional theory of government by Parliament was established on so firm a foundation that it was able to last unimpaired amid the rude shocks to which it was later subjected.

SECTION 2.-Internal Details.

The first difficulty which confronts us is to account satisfactorily for the preference obviously given to Westminster, from the time of Edward I., as the meeting-place of Parliament, and still more to explain the cause of its gradual restriction to Westminster alone. Whether there were any legends attaching to the marshy village which had risen round the palace and church of the Confessor, connecting it with the lost Clovesho, or the Tothill meeting-place of early English Witena-gemóts, whether it was due to the sanctity ascribed to the residence of the saintly king himself, or to mere propinquity to the capital, it is impossible to say. At

first, moreover, Westminster was but one of three principal cities in which the Conqueror year by year assembled his full Witan. Clarendon, Northampton, Woodstock, Oxford, St. Albans, have at least as good a title under the Plantagenets to be called the meeting-place of Parliament. Statutes of Winchester, Gloucester, Acton Burnell, Rhuddlan, vie with statutes of Westminster under the first Edward. York, Northampton, Lincoln, Winchester, Bury St. Edmunds, were all distinguished by sessions of Parliament under his successors. The reign of Edward I., however, says Dr. Stubbs, "saw the whole of the administrative machinery permanently settled in and around the palace (of Westminster); and thus from the very first introduction of representative members, the National Council had its regular home there. There, with a few casual exceptions, all the properly constituted Parliaments of England have been held."

The exact date of the separation of the two Houses cannot be fixed exactly, but it was completely effected by the middle of the fourteenth century. At first there appeared some possibility that the Lords and knights of the shire might unite into one Upper House, leaving the burgesses to form a Lower House by themselves. The distinctions, however, between the Lords and knights were broad and deep. Not only were the former far greater in wealth and power, but they enjoyed the privilege of being summoned to Parliament by a writ addressed to them personally, whereas the knights were assembled by a general summons sent to the sheriff. The Lords, moreover, paid larger sums in the way of feudal dues. There were also strong resemblances between the knights and burgesses in the way of similarity of summons, representative character, and local connection. It was natural, therefore, that when the division was finally made, the Lords should draw off into an Upper House, the two branches of the Commons uniting to form the Lower. This separation was complete by the year 1339. The union of the knights and burgesses was, as it happened, highly important, for the presence of the seventy-four knights* gave to the

*Monmouth was enfranchised 1536, and the Welsh counties in the same year were given one knight each. Cheshire was enfranchised in 1543; Dur

ham in 1673.