Part 3 (1/2)
So that year a Parliament met in Oxford, in the Dominican Priory. It was called the ”Mad Parliament,” because the barons all came to it fully armed, and civil war seemed imminent. But Earl Simon and Richard of Gloucester carried the barons with them in demanding reform. Henry was left without supporters, and civil war was put off for five years.
The work done at this Parliament of Oxford was an attempt to make the King abide loyally by the Great Charter; and the Provisions of Oxford, as they were called, set up a standing council of fifteen, by whom the King was to be guided, and ordered that Parliament was to meet three times a year: at Candlemas (February 2nd), on June 1st, and at Michaelmas. Four knights were to be chosen by the King's lesser freeholders in each county to attend this Parliament, and the baronage was to be represented by twelve commissioners.
It was an oligarchy that the Provisions of Oxford established, ”intended rather to fetter the King than to extend or develop the action of the community at large. The baronial council clearly regards itself as competent to act on behalf of all the estates of the realm, and the expedient of reducing the national deliberations to three sessions of select committees betrays a desire to abridge the frequent and somewhat irksome duty of attendance in Parliament rather than to share the central legislative and deliberative power with the whole body of the people. It must, however, be remembered that the scheme makes a very indistinct claim to the character of a final arrangement.”[19]
For a time things went better in England. The aliens at Henry's Court fled over-seas, and their posts were filled by Englishmen. Parliament also promised that the va.s.sals of the n.o.bles should have better treatment, and that the sheriffs should be chosen by the s.h.i.+re-moots, the county freeholders.
But Henry's promises were quickly broken, and war broke out on the Welsh borders between Simon of Montfort's friend Llewellyn and Mortimer and the Marchers. Edward, Prince of Wales, stood by the Provisions of Oxford for a few years, but supported his father when the latter refused to re-confirm the Provisions in 1263. As a last resource to prevent civil war, Simon and Henry agreed to appeal to King Louis of France to arbitrate on the fulfilment of the Provisions. The Pope had already absolved Henry from obedience to the Provisions, and the Award of Louis, given at Amiens and called the _Mise of Amiens_, was entirely in Henry's favour. It annulled the Provisions of Oxford, left the King free to appoint his own ministers, council, and sheriffs, to employ aliens, and to enjoy power uncontrolled.
But the former charters of the realm were declared inviolate, and no reprisals were to take place.
To Simon and most of the barons the Award was intolerable, and when Henry returned from France with a large force ready to take the vengeance which the Award had forbidden, civil war could not be prevented. London rallied to Simon, and Oxford, the Cinque Ports, and the friars were all on the side of the barons against the King.
On May 14th, 1264, a pitched battle at Lewes ended in complete victory for Simon, and found the King, Prince Edward, and the kinsmen and chief supporters of the Crown prisoners in his hands.
Peace was made, and a treaty--the _Mise of Lewes_--drawn up and signed.
Once more the King promised to keep the Provisions and Charters, and to dismiss the aliens. He also agreed to live thriftily till his debts were paid, and to leave his sons as hostages with Earl Simon.
Simon at once set about the work of reform. The King's Standing, or Privy, Council was reconst.i.tuted, and the Parliamentary Commissioners were abolished, ”for Simon held it as much a man's duty to think and work for his country as to fight for it.” A marked difference is seen between Simon's policy at Oxford and the policy after Lewes. The Provisions of 1258 were restrictive. The Const.i.tution of 1264 deliberately extended the limits of Parliament. ”Either Simon's views of a Const.i.tution had rapidly developed, or the influences which had checked them in 1258 were removed.
Anyhow, he had genius to interpret the mind of the nation, and to antic.i.p.ate the line which was taken by later progress.”[20] What Simon wanted was the approval of all cla.s.ses of the community for his plans, and to that end he issued writs for the Parliament--the _Full Parliament_--of 1265.
The great feature of this Parliament was that for the first time the burgesses of each city and borough were summoned to send two representatives. In addition, two knights were to come from each s.h.i.+re, and clergy and barons as usual--though in the case of the earls and barons only twenty-three were invited, for Simon had no desire for the presence of those who were his enemies. The Full Parliament sat till March, and then two months later war had once more blazed out. Earl Gilbert of Gloucester broke away from Simon, Prince Edward escaped from custody, and these two joined Lord Mortimer and the Welsh Marchers.
On August 4th Edward surprised and routed the army of the younger Simon near Kenilworth, and then advanced to crush the great Earl, who was encamped at Evesham, waiting to join forces with his son. All hope of escape for Earl Simon was lost, and he was outnumbered by seven to two. But fly he would not. One by one the barons who stood by Simon were cut down, but though wounded and dismounted, the great Earl ”fought on to the last like a giant for the freedom of England, till a foot soldier stabbed him in the back under the mail, and he was borne down and slain.” For three hours the unequal fight lasted in the midst of storm and darkness, and when it was over the Grey Friars carried the mangled body of the dead Earl into the priory at Evesham, and laid it before the high altar, for the poorer clergy and the common people all counted Simon of Montfort for a saint.
”Those who knew Simon praise his piety, admire his learning, and extol his prowess as a knight and skill as a general. They tell of his simple fare and plain russet dress, bear witness to his kindly speech and firm friends.h.i.+p to all good men, describe his angry scorn for liars and unjust men, and marvel at his zeal for truth and right, which was such that neither pleasure nor threats nor promises could turn him aside from keeping the oath he swore at Oxford; for he held up the good cause 'like a pillar that cannot be moved, and, like a second Josiah, esteemed righteousness the very healing of his soul.' As a statesman he wished to bind the King to rule according to law, and to make the King's Ministers responsible to a Full Parliament; and though he did not live to see the success of his policy, he had pointed out the way by which future statesmen might bring it about.”[21]
In the hour of Simon's death it might seem that the cause of good government was utterly lost, and for a time Henry triumphed with a fierce reaction. But the very barons who had turned against Simon were quite determined that the Charters should be observed, and Edward was to show, on his coming to the throne, that he had grasped even more fully than Simon the notion of a national representative a.s.sembly, and that he accepted the principle, ”that which touches all shall be approved by all.”
Henry III. died in 1272, and it was not till two years later that Edward I.
was back in England from the crusades to take up the crown. It was an age of great lawgivers; an age that saw St. Louis ruling in France, Alfonso the Wise in Castile, the Emperor Frederick II.--the Wonder of the World--in Sicily. In England Edward shaped the Const.i.tution and settled for future times the lines of Parliamentary representative government.
EDWARD I.'S MODEL PARLIAMENT, 1295
For the first twenty years Edward's Parliaments were great a.s.semblies of barons and knights, and it was not till 1295 that the famous Model Parliament was summoned. ”It is very evident that common dangers must be met by measures concerted in common,” ran the writ to the bishops. Every sheriff was to cause two knights to be elected from each s.h.i.+re, two citizens from each city, two burgesses from each borough. The clergy were to be fully represented from each cathedral and each diocese.
Hitherto Parliament, save in 1265, had been little else than a feudal court, a council of the King's tenants; it became, after 1295, a national a.s.sembly. Edward's plan was that the three estates--clergy, barons, and commons: those who pray, those who fight, and those who work--should be represented. But the clergy always stood aloof, preferring to meet in their own houses of convocation; and the archbishops, bishops, and greater abbots only attended because they were great holders of land and important feudal lords.
Although the knights of the s.h.i.+re were of much the same cla.s.s as the barons, the latter received personal summons to attend, and the knights joined with the representatives of the cities and boroughs. So the two Houses of Parliament consisted of barons and bishops--lords spiritual and lords temporal--and knights and commons; and we have to-day the House of Lords and the House of Commons; the former, as in the thirteenth century, lords spiritual and temporal, the latter, representatives from counties and boroughs.
The admission of elected representatives was to move, in course of time, the centre of government from the Crown to the House of Commons; but in Edward I.'s reign Parliament was just a larger growth of the King's Council--the Council that Norman and Plantagenet kings relied on for a.s.sistance in the administration of justice and the collection of revenue.
The judges of the supreme court were always summoned to Parliament, as the law lords sit in the Upper House to-day.
Money, or rather the raising of money, was the main cause for calling a Parliament. The clergy at first voted their own grants to the Crown in convocation, but came to agree to pay the taxes voted by Lords and Commons, And Lords and Commons, instead of making separate grants, joined in a common grant.
”And, as the bulk of the burden fell upon the Commons, they adopted a formula which placed the Commons in the foreground. The grant was made by the Commons, with the a.s.sent of the Lords spiritual and temporal. This formula appeared in 1395, and became the rule. In 1407, eight years after Henry IV. came to the throne, he a.s.sented to the important principle that money grants were to be initiated by the House of Commons, were not to be reported to the King until both Houses were agreed, and were to be reported by the Speaker of the Commons' House. This rule is strictly observed at the present day. When a money bill, such as the Finance bill for the year or the Appropriation bill, has been pa.s.sed by the House of Commons and agreed to by the House of Lords, it is, unlike all other bills, returned to the House of Commons.”[22] The Speaker, with his own hand, delivers all money bills to the Clerk of Parliaments, the officer whose business it is to signify the royal a.s.sent.
In addition to voting money, the Commons, on the a.s.sembly of Parliament, would pet.i.tion for the redress of grievances. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they were not legislators, but pet.i.tioners for legislation; and as it often happened that their pet.i.tions were not granted in the form they asked, it became a matter of bitter complaint that the laws did not correspond with the pet.i.tions. Henry V. in 1414 granted the request that ”nothing should be enacted to the pet.i.tion of the Commons contrary to their asking, whereby they should be bound without their a.s.sent”; and from that time it became customary for bills to be sent up to the Crown instead of pet.i.tions, leaving the King the alternative of a.s.sent or reaction.
THE n.o.bILITY PREDOMINANT IN PARLIAMENT