m but a part of the great victory of the hierarchy and its advance in power, which marks the first half of the 13th century. By combining with th

or the rights of patrons, and in fact mostly to foreigners. The Pope's exchequer drew its richest revenues from England; there was no end to the exactions of its subordinate agents, Master Martin, Master Marin, Peter Rubeo, and all the rest of them. Even the King surrounded himself with foreigners. To his own relations and to the relations of his Proven?al wife fell the most profitable places, and the advantages arising from his paramount feudal rights; they too exercised much influence on public affairs, and that in the interests of the Papal power, with which they were allied. Riotous movements occasionally took place against this system, but they were suppressed: men suffered in silence as long as it was only t

England, if they did not actually begin, yet f

gh gave it to be understood that they ought to have been consulted first. It was precisely the alliance of the Pope and the King that they had long felt most bitterly; they said truly, England would by such a joint action be as it were ground to dust between two millstones. As, however, despite all remonstrances, the demands were persevered with,-for the King had taken on himself the debts incurred by Pope Alexander IV in the Neapolitan war, and the Pope had already referred to England the bankers entrusted with the payments,-a storm of opposition broke out, which led to what was equivalent to an overthrow of the government. The King had to consent to the appointment of a committee for reforming the realm,

stles occupied, their places given to the foremost Englishmen. The Papal legate Guido, one of the most distinguished members of the Curia, who himself became Pope at a later time, was forbidden to enter England. Most foreigners, it mattered not of what station or nationality, were forced to quit the realm: it went hard with those who could not speak E

pt was made to form a Parliamentary Assembl

consult on the affairs of the kingdom.[39] There is no doubt that these twelve belonged to the nobles and were to represent them: the decisive point lies in the fact that it was not a number of nobles summoned by the King, b

Ports, to form a Parliament in conjunction with the nobles of the realm. This was not an altogether new thing in the European world; we know that in the Cortes of Aragon, as early as the 12th century, by the side of the high nobility and the ecclesiastics there appeared also the Hidalgos and the deputies of the Commons; and Simon de Montfort might well be aware of this, since his father had been in so many ways connected with Aragon. In England itself under King John men had come very near it without however carrying it through: not till afterwards did the innovation appear a real necessity. In opposition to the one-sided power exercised by the foreigners, nothing was so much insisted on in dail

foreigners, nor the absolute dependence on the Papal policy. The later government of Henry III has a different character from the earlier: the legate himself confirmed Magna Charta in the shape finally accepted. It is not merely at the great national festivals that we find representatives of the towns present, whom the King has summoned; it is beyond a doubt that one of the most important statutes of the time was passed with their

even speaks of it in his will; or else he would have wished to recover from the French crown the lands which his father had inherited, and which had passed into French possession; but neithe

itish nationality. The bards, reviving the old prophecies, promised him the ancient crown of Brutus; but when he ventured out of the mountains, he was overpowered and fell in a hand-to-hand conflict. The English crown was not to

one which after it had once given a home to the Anglo-Saxons who fled before the Normans, thought its honour concerned in repelling all English influences. A disputed succession gave Edward I an opportunity of reviving the claims of his predecessors to the overlordship of Scotland: he gave the Scotch a king, whom the Scotch rejected simply because he was the English King's nomin

athered together the representatives of the counties and the towns, to hear his demands and to act accordingly; chiefly to vote him subsidies. After the victory he had called an assembly of nobles, knights, and towns, to take counsel with them about the treatment of the captives and the country. Similarly he drew together the

f taxes, and those the most oppressive: the eighth, even the fifth part of men's income. For the campaign in Flanders he summone

the one with the principles of the other, caused a general agitation. In the year 1297 the spiritual lords under their archbishop, as well as the temporal ones (who denied the obligation to serve beyond the sea) under the Constable and Marshal, set th

iefs who rise in Turkey against the established order of things, the right of which they do not recognise, had come down from the hill country, at the head of the fugitives and exiles, a robber-patriot, of gigantic bodily strength and innate talent for war. His successes soon increased his band to the size of an army; he beat the English in a pitched battle, and then swept over the borders into the English territory. If the ro

r these had gone; one word of discu

taxes and contributions which had been hitherto made to the King for his wars were not to be regarded as binding for the future. He reserves only the old customary taxes: to the higher clergy, the nobility, and the commons of the land the assurance is given, that under no circumstances, however pressing, should any tax or contribution or requisition-not even the export duty on wool-be levied except by their common consent and for the interests of all.[45] In the Latin text all sounds more open and less reserved: but even the words of the authentic document include a very essential limitation of the prerogative of the crown, which hitherto had alone exercised the right of estimating what the state needed and of fixing the payments by this standard. The King was averse at heart to the limitation even in this form. When he came back from Flanders after concluding a truce with France, and army and people were met together at York, to carry out a great campa

own direct supremacy: the concessions were the result of the war, which could not be carried on with the existing means. When Edward I laid stress on the necessity of greater common efforts, the counter-demand which was made on him, and to which he yielded, merely implied

e Church of Rome, the King therefore was violating the rights of that Church by his invasions. To confront the Pope, King Edward thought it best, as did Philip the Fair of France about the same time, to call in his Estates to his aid, since without them no answer to the claim was possible. The Estates then in a long letter not merely maintain th

ves of the counties and towns were summoned it is not always clear whether they were elected or named.[49] Edward I could not free himself from the habits of arbitrary rule and the old ideas connected with them.

to complete still further the foundations of a

influence on affairs. Discontented with this, the King's nearest cousin, Thomas of Lancaster, placed himself at the head of the great nobles, as indeed he was believed to have sworn to his father in law (whose rich possessions passed to him, and who feared a ret

ices of State, or even to leave the country: the officers of the crown were to be responsib

Hugh Despencers undertook it: under their leadership the barons were defeated, and Thomas of Lancaster in his turn paid

visible. It was declared that never for the future should any ordinance affecting the King's power and proceeding from his subjects be valid, but only that should be law which was discussed, agreed on, and enacted in Parliament by the King with the consent of the prelates, the earls and barons, and the commonalty of the realm.[50] For it was above all things necessary to withdraw the legislative a

he had to think it a piece of good fortune that, on the ground of his own abdication, his son was acknowledged as his successor. The latter however could only obtain real possession of the royal power by overthrowing the faction to

rm was found for its consultations. In the first years of Edward III its four constituent parts, prelates, barons, knights, and town deputies, held their debates in four different assemblies; but gradually th

r the third for the first time into complete operation, viz. the parti

ed of their own authority according to their own views, not to put up with any more outrages, and not merely to

to cross the sea and not let himself be hindered by any one, not even by the Pope, from appealing to the judgment of God by battle. The clergy imposed on themselves a three-years' tenth, the counties a fifteenth, the towns two tenths; the great nobles followed him in person with their squires and horsemen, without even alluding to their old remonstrances. So that splendid army made its appearance in France, in which the weapons of the yeomen vied with those of

these circumstances and of the well-calculated encouragement of Edward III, we find that English commerce prospered immensely and, in emulous alliance with that of Flanders, began to form another great centre for the general commerce of the world. It was still chiefly in the hands of foreigners, but the English made great profits by it. Their riches gained them almost as much prestige in the world as their bravery.[52] The more money-resources the towns possessed, and the more they could and did support the King, the greater became their influence on

they remonstrated; they had no objection to the ordinances themselves, but insis

se they were not willing to pay it, with judicial proceedings.[54] We know the earlier kings had seen in the connexion with Rome a last resource against the demands of the Estates: on the King's side it required some resolution to renounce it. But the very nature of the Parliamentary government, as Edward III had settled it, involved a disregard of these considerations for the future. It was before the Parliament itself that he laid the Papal demands for their consent and counsel. The Estates consulted separately: first the spiritual and lay lords framed their resolution, then the town deputies assented to it. The ans

ainst the Papacy. Now that the Parliamentary constitution was established in its first stage, it is clear how much the union of the Cro

Paris, Historia Majo

let themselves be held back by anything-'quin regnum, in quo sunt nati homin

slus,-ke le commun eslise 12 prodes hommes ke vendrunt as parlemens-pur treter de besoigne le rei et del reaume.' On

a machinamenta quaeri? Nisi ut de regno illo regium nomen aboleatur omnino: nisi ut Chr

egni tam ex majoribus quam minori

de bonis terrae ipsa terra cons

o, or Nova additio cartarum; in Hemingb

collection of charters prefixed to the collection of

par commun assent de tout le Roiaume e a commun profist de meismes le Roiaume, sauve les auncienes aydes e prises due e acoustumees.' The Articulus insertus in Magna Charta, according to the

quod confirmaverat

videns rex quod non desisterent ab inceptis nec adquiescerent sibi in nece

Feb. 1301. In Rymer,

; Hallam, Addit

oses, qui serount à establir-soient tretées accordees et establies en parlaments par not

shall 1351, Parliamenta

ually 'lanae commoda,-divitias in comparatione ad alios reges centuplas

Repor

ès devers le roy et son roialme pu

stitutes iv. 13. In Urban V's letter to Edward in Rainaldus 1365, 13, the demand is not so clearly expressed, bu