HIS3406 Lecture Notes on The English Parliament in the 14th Century

1. HIS3406 Lecture Notes on The English Parliament in the 14th Century (by Fred Cheung)

2. The Angevin (Plantagenet) Kings: Henry II (Father of the English Common Law), r. 1154-1189 Richard I (the Lion-Hearted), r. 1189-1199 John (the Lackland), r. 1199-1216 Henry III, r. 1216-1272 Edward I, r. 1272-1307 Edward II, r. 1307-1327 Edward III, r. 1327-1377 Richard II, r. 1377-1399

3. Main References: Hollister, The Making of England, pp. 327-336. Michael Prestwich, The Three Edwards: War and State in England, 1272-1377, (London, 1980). W.M. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III: Crown and Political Society in England, 1327-1377 (New Haven, 1990). Goronwy Edwards, The Second Century of the English Parliament (Oxford, 1979) G.L. Harriss, King, Parliament and Public Finance in Medieval England to 1369 (Oxford, 1975). George Holmes, The Good Parliament (Oxford, 1975).

4. English Parliament in the Fourteenth Century According to Hollister, �Against the backdrop of foreign military campaigning that characterized much of the fourteenth century, Parliament developed significantly. Hugh military expenditures forced the monarchy to depend increasingly on extraordinary taxation, and the revenues that the kings so desperately needed could be obtained only by parliamentary consent. Hence, the parliaments of the fourteenth century were in an ideal bargaining position. �� But the fourteenth-century parliaments included classes other than the nobility, �� hard bargaining over subsidies ensured that it was they who gained the most politically from the king�s dependence on parliamentary grants.

5. As the fourteenth dawned, Parliament remained ill-defined in membership and function. But by the close of the century it had assumed something of its modern form. It had split into [Houses of] Lords and Commons, and the Commons had acquired a crucial role in taxation and legislation. By 1399 the parliamentary tradition had become etched indelibly into the English political system.

6. The fourteenth century, therefore, was a crucial epoch in the development of Parliament and, more specifically, in the rise of the Commons. By the time of Edward I�s death, the summoning of representatives of townspeople and gentry was becoming common practice, and although they were present at only three of the first seven parliaments of Edward II, they attended all but two of the parliaments between 1310 and 1327. They became a normal component of Edward III�s parliaments and were invariably present from the mid-fourteenth century onward.

7. Just when representatives of town and shires were becoming an integral part of Parliament, the two groups were also coalescing into a single political body. Gradually they came to realize that they shared many interests. The shire knights remained more assertive than the burghers in fourteenth-century parliaments. But the economic resources of the urban elites, relative to those of other classes,

8. expanded throughout this period, and both gentry and townspeople discovered that they could accomplish more by cooperating than by defending their interests alone. Frequent intermarriages between members of the two classes cemented their community of interest. Before the fourteenth century was half over they had fused politically into a single parliamentary group: the Commons.

9. This process of fusion began under Edward II and reached its completion under Edward III. �� They were described in the rolls of Parliament at that time as �men of the Commons.� Thereafter, joint meetings became customary, and the Commons took its place as a normal element in the government of England.

10. Because Commons developed as a separate parliamentary group, the members of Parliament who were not included in the Commons �� -- the great magnates �� -- evolved into a distinct body known as the House of Lords. The term house of lords does not actually appear in documents until the sixteenth century, but the institution itself was in existence by the mid-fourteenth.

11. �� Nevertheless, the emergence of Commons and the progressive extension of its power is a matter of immense significance in the development of the unwritten English �constitution.� In the crisis of 1297 the royal government of Edward I had conceded that all uncustomary taxes must be approved by the community of the realm. It was assumed by then that the community was embodied in parliaments. Under Edward III this power to approve taxes passed gradually into the hands of Commons. ��

12. Commons was in a strong position, for the increasingly affluent classes that it represented were supplying the monarchy with much of its tax revenues. Accordingly, by the end of the fourteenth century the Commons was coming to exercise the exclusive right to originate parliamentary taxation. In 1395 a parliamentary grant was made �by the Commons with the advice and assent of the Lords.� This was the first time these exact words were used, but they became the standard formula in years thereafter.

13. Thus, by 1399 the approval of Parliament, more specifically the Commons, was required for all extraordinary taxes, direct or indirect, �� Parliament used its fiscal power to establish an ever-greater control over government policies. �� The right to grant or refuse taxes, they were discovering, was an effective avenue to political power. �...

14. Edward III�s first Parliament, meeting in 1327, introduced for the first time a Commons petition � a list of grievances that Parliament expected the monarchy to consider seriously in return for the granting of taxes. Parliaments had long been accustomed to receiving and passing on to the king petitions from individuals or groups. The Commons petition differed from these earlier requests in that it dealt with matters of general interest to the community of the realm. The Commons petition of 1327 concerned such issues as the reaffirmation of Magna Carta, the soundness of English currency, and the size of cloths sold in English markets. Coming at a time of grave political crisis,

15. it received sympathetic attention of the royal government and gave rise to two statutes and several ordinances and decrees. More important, it set a precedent. Similar petitions were introduced in the parliaments of 1333 and 1337, and they appeared regularly from 1343 onward. Fourteenth-century parliaments used the Commons petition repeatedly as a device to put pressure on the king to grant their wishes, and as time went on it became customary for a Commons petition to give rise to royal statutes.

16. Thus the Commons petition was a significant step in the direction of parliamentary legislation. In later years the Commons petition evolved into the Commons bill, and thus the will of the House of Commons became the law of England. Indeed, after the mid-fourteenth century, most statutes resulted directly from Commons petitions or bills rather than from royal initiative, �� The mechanism for Commons legislation was thereby established. It remained only to refine the process.

17. �� Meanwhile, the judicial structure evolved slowly along the general lines established by Edward I. The lords in Parliament continued to function as the highest tribunal. The common-law courts grew increasingly specialized �� The court of King�s Bench was now primarily responsible for criminal cases, Common Pleas for civil cases, and the Exchequer for royal revenue cases. �� the king�s justice in the countryside was handled by a new group of officials � usually drawn from the local gentry � known as the justices of the peace. The rise of these new officials meant that the gentry had, in effect, won control of the local courts.

18. Justices of the peace would remain dominant in the administrative and judicial organization of the counties for centuries to come. �� [Meanwhile,] the Hundred Years War and concurrent warfare against the Scots placed a tremendous burden on the royal administration. �� The Commons, through their control of taxation, could hamstring royal policies with which they disagreed. �� And never again could it [the crown] safely ignore the Commons. (Hollister, The Making of England, pp. 327 � 334).

19. [+ The Black Death: came to Europe at the end of 1347 and began to spread quickly during the winters of 1347-1348. In England, it struck fatally in 1349, when it killed about a quarter of the population. Further outbreaks occurred during the 1360s and 1370s. By the end of the century, the population of England had been decreased by about 40%. According to Hollister, �The Black Death traveled in three forms. Bubonic plague, the most common form, was carried by black rats and by the fleas that rode on their backs. �� Bubonic plague attacked the lymphatic system, producing huge swelling (�buboes�) in the lymph nodes, �� Although excruciatingly painful, bubonic plague was not directly infectious. ��

20. Pneumonic plague, by contrast, was highly contagious. It resulted when a bubonic plague sufferer also had (or developed) pneumonia, and the plague bacillus invaded the pneumococcus cells in the lungs. Water droplets sprayed from the lungs by coughing, sneezing, or even breathing could thus communicate the plague bacillus to another person. This form of disease was nearly always fatal, and killed within two or three days. The third form, septicemic plague, was the rarest, but also the most deadly and the most terrifying.

21. Like bubonic plague, septicemic plague was born by fleas, but instead of attacking the lymphatic system, the bacillus went directly into the victim�s blood stream, producing death in a matter of hours, before buboes could even form. This is the form of plague that cause people in apparently perfect health at bedtime to be dead by morning. (Philip Ziegler, The Black Death, New York, 1969)� Hollister, The Making of England, pp. 336-337.)]