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 1921 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 255 clear that they are primarily called together for other than judicial purposes. To this capacity of highest court of justice in the land Dr. Pollard ascribes the success of the English parliament where others failed. He admits that impeachment and attainder were never effective against the Crown without rebellion, but claims that they established the responsibility of ministers and enabled the Tudors to override ' fundamental law and medieval liberties '. A parliament of estates lacking such a judicial nucleus, as was the case in France, was- destined to failure. Indeed, a system of three estates was in itself foredoomed since it was based on class divisions. Fortunately, England escaped this danger also, the three estates of our fourteenth-century parliament being a myth. It certainly seems to be the case that there was no clear division into three bodies, and that the description of lords, clergy, and commons as three estates first occurs in the records in 1421, when, as ingeniously suggested here, it may be due to the provision of the treaty of Troyes that the estates of both countries should give their approval. Nevertheless, the tendency to distinguish the three estates practically, if not by that name, is observable as early as 1341, when clergy, lords, and commons put in separate petitions and received separate answers. Dr. Pollard is less happy in finding the secret of the decay of foreign parliamentary systems in their clear division into class estates and their divorce of taxation and petition for redress from justice. His argument is based too exclusively on the case of the states-general of France, and also ignores other fairly obvious obstacles to their success. There is no attempt to explain the collapse of the cortes of Castille, which certainly received petitions like the English parliament and exhibit the same early want of definition between great and small councils. We are told, too, on excellent authority, that the Scottish parliament of the fourteenth century, though organized in three estates, was undoubtedly a high court and enforced responsibility of ministers. There was, therefore, no necessary divorce between a high court of parliament and a division of estates on class lines. The Scottish case shows, too, that the independent assent of a majority of each estate to legislation was not inherent in the system. We are not, therefore, obliged to accept Dr. Pollard's view that if our parliament had been so organized, such measures as the provisors and praemunire legislation of Edward III and the ecclesiastical establishment of Elizabeth could only have been carried into effect by a revolution (pp. 75-6). The recognition of six degrees (gradus) rather than three estates in the much-discussed Modus Tenendi Parliamentum agrees with other in- ternal evidence l in supporting its ascription to a date not later than the early years of Edward III and probably in the preceding reign. The argument for placing it under Edward II, which has been based on the date 1 Professor Baldwin points out that its description of the composition of the royal council is inapplicable to the reign of Richard II, to which recent students have inclined to ascribe it. It must be admitted that the opening of parliament with a sermon is not recorded for the earlier period. It is possible that the tract was revised under Richard when the precedents of his great-grandfather's reign were overhauled.