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did was to restore it to the tradition of Magna Carta and pledge the king and his heirs strictly to observe it, not now however expressed in feudal language but broadened out to cover all the non-feudal taxation of which the time had knowledge.

There can be no question but that the men who framed this document intended to cover all forms of taxation, except the feudal dues, and believed they had done so. And in the future whenever this issue was squarely raised this was the interpretation which was placed upon the principle. From this date on it was never called in question, as a fundamental rule of action, by any English king. Successive kings might try to avoid its effect by inventing new forms of revenue to which they could say it did not apply or by unwarranted extensions of old revenues, but from 1297 it was definitely established as a fundamental law of the constitution that the king was dependent for his revenue upon a previous grant. It is in the form given it in the Confirmation that this principle becomes the foundation of the power of parliament in the fourteenth century and ultimately of the whole constitution.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.-G. B. Adams, The Origin of the English Constitution, 1920. E. Barker, The Dominican Order and Convocation, 1913. N. S. B. Gras, The Early English Customs System, 1918. D. Pasquet, Les Origines de la Chambre des Communes, 1914. L. O. Pike, Constitutional History of the House of Lords, 1894. A. F. Pollard, The Evolution of Parlia ment, 1920. G. W. Prothero, Simon de Montfort, 1877. L. Riess, Ursprung des Englischen Unterhauses, Historische Zeitschrift, lx, 1, 1888. A. B. White, The Concentration of Representatives, A. H. R., xix, 735, 1914.

CHAPTER VIII

THE GROWTH OF PARLIAMENT

The two great ages in the growth of parliamentary power in the history of the constitution are the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries for, although there was also great advance in this particular in the sixteenth and nineteenth, the relative advance in these two ages of progress, as determined by the point from which they started, cannot be compared with that in the former two. If the end of the fourteenth century was to see parliament firmly established in its own place in the state, in possession of a considerable body of definite rights which it had defended successfully against the Crown, and clearly to be recognized by us as already the successor of the baronial opposition to be the protector of the fundamental principles of the constitution, it was something very different at the beginning of that century. Notwithstanding all the progress of the thirteenth century, parliament entered the fourteenth still vague and formless, with composition, organization and methods of working still undetermined.

So accustomed are we to think of the English constitution as one in which parliament, or more specifically the house of commons as representing the nation, is in supreme control of all the functions and operations of government that it may require an effort for us to remember that at the beginning of the fourteenth century we stand at the beginning of parliament as the organ of representative government not merely in England but in all history. What it was to be, the share which it was to take in actual government, was still to be determined. As yet nothing was

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fixed; the rights and functions of the new institution were vague and undefined; nothing was known even of its possibilities. As the successor of the feudal great council and heir of the principles into which feudal consent to taxation had been transformed during the thirteenth century, that each class in the community should give consent to its own taxation, parliament had a starting point of the greatest strategic value from which to begin its advance to power. How conscious parliament was of the meaning of this advantage we hardly dare to say and at most it was a starting point only. In all probability we must say, as of the age of formation just before, that it was the practical purpose of the moment rather than any theory of government or foresight of a free constitution, that determined each step as it was taken.

The struggle to win full control of national revenues and expenditures was to be long and severe. In legislation hardly even a starting point for the new institution had yet been found, and in the determination of the general policy of the government, parliament foresaw its own future so little that it sometimes vigorously repudiated such an ambition and laid the foundations of its later power in entire unconsciousness of what it was doing. Yet to secure these three things was necessary before modern parliamentary government could come into existence: complete control by parliament of all national revenue and expenditure; the exclusive exercise of the legislative right by parliament, including the house of commons as an equal partner in every act; and the power to determine the general policy which at any moment of time should give character and purpose to the government. At the end of the fourteenth century no one of these had been so far secured as to be beyond future danger, but great progress had been made towards them all and in regard to the first at least but little comparatively speaking yet remained to be done.

If parliament entered the fourteenth century still vague

and formless with respect to its composition and its own internal organization, these questions were speedily settled. Steadily it became more and more the understood thing that a parliament of full powers should contain the two new elements, the representatives of the counties and of the towns. The great council meeting without the new elements retained for a long time something of its old powers, and even the small council acting with the king, in ways that infringed upon the field of parliament, but from this century on these were merely survivals of steadily diminishing significance. A true parliament with full legislative and other rights is the new institution, not the old.

The final form of organization was closely connected with the final method of composition. The ecclesiastical element, the representatives of the general clergy, withdrew before the middle of the century to perform their parliamentary duties in assemblies of their own, called "convocation," which had existed as legislative assemblies of the clergy for a century. This act of theirs was brought about by their determination to keep in their own hands the right to grant their own taxes and, while it is evidence of the thirteenth century right of each class separately to decide what it would give the state, it indicates to some extent a fear on their part that this was a disappearing right. They continued for some time to be summoned to parliament by the premunientes clause, but they did not attend as an estate, and retained the right separately to vote their taxes until 1664. By their withdrawal parliament was left to be composed of the second and third estates only, for the bishops and abbots remained in the house of lords as barons, as members of the great council, not as clergy.

By this renunciation of the clergy, however, the question of the number of "houses" in the new institution was not definitely settled. In the thirteenth century the practice of uniting the new elements in one assembly with the great council had been common. In Europe at large practice was

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not uniform. In Aragon the knights formed a house by themselves, in most states they joined the barons. In Sweden there were four houses, the representatives of the country freemen acting by themselves; in Scotland there remained only one. Nearly everywhere however the representatives of the towns formed a separate part of the assembly. In England the problem was: will the knights finally associate themselves with the barons in the upper house or join the burgesses in the lower. In the first part of the reign of Edward III the question was settled. In spite of the fact that they were drawn from an aristocratic landowning class, a minor aristocracy, the knights joined with the commercial class of the towns to form the house of commons. This peculiar result in England was no doubt due to peculiar conditions which were briefly indicated in the last chapter.

own.

The merchant burgher, the political equal of the minor baron in the county court, was in fourteenth-century England regarded as his social equal also, married his sons and daughters into knightly families without exciting opposition, and found no obstacle to the purchase of land or even, if he wished, to the foundation of a knightly family of his While barriers of custom and interest were being raised between the great and minor barons, they were being broken down between the latter and the burghers. In the fourteenth century the English knights finally found themselves more at home with the burgesses, and the house of commons was formed by the combination of these two classes. This is probably all that we need to say by way of explanation, the knights found themselves more at home with the burgesses.

This unintended event probably had much to do with the rapid advance of parliament in power during the fourteenth century, for that advance in reality was not that of both houses of parliament equally but of the house of commons. The house of lords considered by itself was relatively of