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

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

• (by Fred Cheung)

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• 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

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• 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).

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• 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 kings dependence on
  parliamentary grants.

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• 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.

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• 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 Is 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 IIIs
  parliaments and were invariably present from the
  mid-fourteenth century onward.

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• 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,

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.
• ...

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• Edward IIIs 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,

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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 Kings
  Bench was now primarily responsible for criminal
  cases, Common Pleas for civil cases, and the
  Exchequer for royal revenue cases. the kings
  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.

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• 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).

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• Like bubonic plague, septicemic plague was born
  by fleas, but instead of attacking the lymphatic
  system, the bacillus went directly into the
  victims 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.)