Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/332

Rh 314 ENGLAND [HISTORY. Hi. Eeign of a foul assassination. The new king was still a minor, and Edward the first years of his reign were the reign of his mother Isabel and her favourite Roger Mortimer. Another revolu tion was needed to break their power. In 1 330, with the execution of Mortimer and the imprisonment of Isabel, the real reign of Edward I [I. begins. And within a short space the struggle with Scotland has again begun, to be merged in a few years in the long abiding struggle between England and France. In a constitutional point of view, as well as in many others, the period which we have just gone through may be deemed the most important of all periods in English history. It is the time during which our nation, our laws, our language, finally assimilated whatever was to be assimilated of the foreign elements brought in by the Norman Conquest, and finally threw off whatever was to be thrown off. At the beginning of the period we saw the English nation debating between an Angevin and a French king. At the end of it England, as England, is a great European power, waging war on the continent for the conquest of France. So it is with everything else. [t is during this time that most of the things which go to make up the national life put on their later form. Above all things, this was the case with the great council of the English nation. It is for constitutional historians to trace the minuter details; the main outline may be traced in the assemblies of the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I. The name of the assembly had hitherto been flue- Name of tuating. During this period the name of Parliament became Parha- fi na iiy established. The name is a translation of an Old- Chronicle to have had &quot; very deep speech with his Witan.&quot; This deep speech, in Latin colloquium, in French parlement, was the distinguishing feature of a meeting between king and people; in the end it gave its name to the assembly itself. The constitution of the assembly, as defined in the Great Charter, did not absolutely imply representation ; but it showed that the full establishment of representation could not be long delayed. The work of this period was to call up, alongside of the gathering of prelates, earls, and other great men specially summoned, into which the Origin of ancient Witeuagem6&quot;t had shrank up, another assembly the Com- di re ctly representing all other classes of the nation which )US&amp;gt; enjoyed political rights. This assembly, chosen by various local bodies, communttates or universitates, having a quasi corporate being, came gradually to bear the name of the commons. The knights of the shire, the barons, citizen?, and burgesses of the towns, were severally chosen by the com- muna or communitas of that part of the people which they represented. We thus get the two houses of Lords and Commons, of which we have seen foreshadowings getting more and more clear from the days of the Conqueror on wards. But it was only gradually fixed that the mem bers of the national council should sit in two bodies, and not in one or in more than two. The notion of local representation, by which shires and boroughs chose representatives of their own communities, had to some ex tent to strive with another doctrine, that of the representa- Doctriue tion of estates or classes of men. The thirteenth century was the age when the national assemblies, not only of Eng land but of most other European countries, were putting on their definite shape. And, in most of them, the system of estates prevailed. These in most countries were three clergy, nobles, and commons. By these last were commonly meant only the communities of the chartered towns, while the noblesse of foreign countries answered to the lesser barons and knights who in England were reckoned among the commons. The English system thus went far to take in the whole free population, while the estates of other of estates. countries, the commons no less than the clergy and nobles, must be looked on as privileged bodies. In England we had in truth no estates ; we had no nobility in the foreign sense. Such a nobility was inconsistent with the institu- Natu tion of peerage, which gradually grew out of the practice of the P personal summons. The English peerage is strictly official. ^ Two official classes, bishops and earls, have always kept their right of personal summons. With regard to others, both lay barons and churchmen under the rank of the bishops and chief abbots, it is plain that in the early parliaments the king summoned very much whom he would. It was only gradually that the right of sum mons was held, first to be vested for life in every map who had once been summoned, and afterwards to be hereditary in his descendants.- Thus was formed the House of Lords, consisting of certain lay members succeed ing by hereditary right, and of certain heads of ecclesiasti cal foundations. The office of the peer, the office of legislator and judge, passes by hereditary succession in the one case, by ecclesiastical succession in the other. The holder of the hereditary office was gradually clothed with various personal privileges, but his children remained unprivileged members of the general body of the commons. So far as nobility exists at all in England, it is confined to the person of the peer for the time being. But in truth there is in England no nobility, no estate of nobles, in the continental sense of those words. Yet the continental theory of estates so far worked in the Phra development of our parliamentary system that the &quot; Three Estates of England&quot; became a familiar phrase. It was meant to denote the lords, the commons, and the clergy in their parliamentary character. For it is plain that it was the intention of Edward I. to organize the clergy as a parliamentary estate, alongside of the lords and commons. This scheme failed, mainly through the unwillingness of the clergy themselves to attend in a secular assembty. This left, so far as there were any estates at all, two estates only, lords and commons. This led to the common mis take a mistake of respectable antiquity cf fancying the three estates to be king, lords, and commons. The eccle siastical members of the House of Lords kept their seats there ; but the parliamentary representation of the clergy as an estate came to nothing. So far as the clergy kept any parliamentary powers, they exercised them in the two provincial convocations. These anomalous assemblies, fluc tuating between the character of an ecclesiastical synod and of a parliamentary estate, kept, from Edward I. to Charles II., the parliamentary power of self-taxation. For a long time lords and commons taxed themselves separately. So did the clergy ; so sometimes did other bodies. It was only very gradually that thefinal constitution of parliament was settled. That the barons should sit with the bishops and earls, that the citizens and burgesses should sit with the knights, were points which gradually settled themselves. And more than once things looked as if, besides separate assemblies of the clergy, we might have had also separate assemblies of merchants and of lawyers. The great fact is that, while at the beginning of the thirteenth century the name and the constitution of the national assembly were still unsettled, at the beginning of the fourteenth century we had a regular parliament of Lords and Commons. The chief point which still remained unsettled was the position of the estate of the clergy. This seems to be the general result of the constitutional A&sei growth of the thirteenth century, as traced out by our great ^^ constitutional historian. Leaving the minuter details, we jjj may here mark some of the chief steps in the progress. During the reign of Henry III. assemblies were constantly held, and their constitution is often vaguely described. But in a great many cases phrases are used which, however
 * &quot; English phrase. The Conqueror is said in the English