CHAP. General view. by his forerunners. A strongly centralised administration of justice and finance made the king practically independent of his barons, while it revived the ancient popular institutions, and brought every class into contact with the throne. A new aristocracy arose, mainly dependent on the monarchy, but far more national than that which sprang from the Conquest. The union of king and people was stronger than before; it bore the strain of oppressive taxation and religious struggle, of war without and rebellion within. But the strengthening of the monarchy was not the only result. When the sovereign supported himself by aid of the law, the thought was sure to occur that the chains he forged for others might be used to bind himself. The nobility he had done most to raise, the people he had educated into a belief in law, would be the first to cry out against a violation of that law by the authority which gave it. Henry was wise enough to avoid this danger: Richard's personal character and his long absence from home prevented an outburst; but John's folly, tyranny, and vice united all elements against him. The process of amalgamation, which had been going on for a century and a half, was now complete; more than a generation before it had been said that English and French-born were no longer to be distinguished. The universal pressure of a strong government, the tendency towards equality inherent in the rule of law, had helped to complete the union, the last obstacle to which was removed by the loss of Normandy; and under a sense of common wrong the new-born spirit of nationality sprang into consciousness of its power. There was no longer an alliance between the king, the I. Church, and the people, against the feudal nobility; CHAP. it was now for the first time an alliance of the Church, the barons, and the people against the king. The 1066-1215 newer nobility, in whom the political sense was strongest; the remnants of the older baronage striving to recover their position; the smaller barons, the subtenants, and others, who eagerly grasped the occasion to make their complaints heard; the towns, with London at their head, in the first freshness of municipal and mercantile importance; and above and embracing all, the Church, with its broader notions of justice and its popular sympathies-these were the forces to the union of which John had to give way at Runnymede. the idea of Such in a few words was the general course of Growth of national development, such the relations between Parliament. king and people, before 1215. Along with and dependent on the growth of the nation, grows the idea of a Parliament, or representative council. In a people composed of elements so different as those of which England consisted immediately after the Conquest there was no possible centre, no representative of national unity, but the monarch. As the different) elements coalesced, a representative body became possible; no sooner was the national unity complete than Parliament in its modern form began to appear. But between the baronial assemblies of the Norman The Nakings and the Parliaments of our own day there is Council very little similarity, though there is a distinct and under the unbroken connexion. Many attempts have indeed kings. been made, chiefly by ardent supporters of Parliamentary rights, to trace back those rights to an antiquity equal to that of the monarchy; but regularity of tional Norman ! CHAP. I. 1066-1215 The National Council under the Norman kings. Discussions in the Council. The Coun cil as a Court of Justice. composition and consistency of authority do not seem to have belonged to the earlier councils of the realm. On certain regularly-recurring occasions the Norman kings were in the habit of gathering round them their vassals. The king wore his crown, his greater barons appeared in all their state, with long trains of attendants, who heightened the splendour of their lords. Such an assembly was calculated to overawe a subject people, and to inspire respect in strangers who visited what was then perhaps the most splendid court of Europe. At such times state business was sometimes discussed if the king willed it; sometimes there was no discussion; if it appeared inconvenient to hold the assembly, there was no scruple in omitting it altogether. The subjects discussed were only those which the king chose to bring forward; with him rested all initiative; until Stephens reign there seem to be no records of such discussions as could have led to a division.1 Next to the object of displaying a somewhat barbaric magnificence, the purpose of these assemblies was primarily judicial. But justice resided only in the king, or in those to whom he delegated his authority; there is little trace of a great feudal court of justice; the tendency was more and more to look on the king alone as holder of the scales. The prejudices of the barons in favour of judgment by their peers were satisfied so long as the Curia and the Exchequer were recruited from their ranks. Although important trials were sometimes carried on before the Great Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 357. 2 Gneist, Verw. i. 241 seq. CHAP. I. 1066-1215 cil, liam I : Council, yet the permanent courts, and commissions named at will by the king, usurped more and more its claim to judicial functions. Further, there is no Legislative trace of any constitutional authority which might be power of supposed to be conferred on legislative acts by the the counfact that they were made by the king in council. But here a different tendency at once appears. The moral force which such acts would gain if backed by the magnates of the realm was too evident to be neglected. Thus the heading of the so-called Laws of under WilWilliam I, which in their oldest extant form are said by Professor Stubbs to date from the reign of Henry I,1 states that the said laws were made by the Conqueror, with his chief men,' although the terms of the statutes themselves hint at nothing but an act of the king's sovereign will. So too the charter issued by Henry I on his accession speaks of the laws of Edward having been granted by his father, with additions made by him, with the counsel of his barons; and in the Act separating the ecclesiastical and civil jurisdictions, 'the one authentic monument of Williams jurisprudence," the king declares it to be done in common council and by counsel of the higher clergy and all the great men of the realm.' liam II: Whatever argument may be deduced on behalf of under Wilparliamentary authority from these enactments of the Conqueror is considerably weakened by the fact that there are said to be no traces of legislative assemblies under his successor. On the other hand, the 1 The form given in Fad. i. I is said by the same author to be a fabrication of the 13th century. 2 Volo, interdicimus, hoc præcipio et volo, ego prohibeo, and the like are the terms used.-Stubbs, Sel. Chart. 80. 3 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 213. 'Lords' Report i. 36. CHAP. The Na Council under Henry I : charter of Henry I attributes his coronation to 'the mercy of God and the common counsel of the barons 1066-1215 of all England;' and it is just this right of coronational tion and the form of election, still kept up, which seem more than anything else to have preserved the notion of constitutional rights from complete oblivion. The 'consent of the barons' is stated to have been given to the kings tenure of forests; while concessions were made by the 'kings free gift,' and assemblies summoned by royal authority and power." Florence of Worcester declares the queen to have acted in Henry's absence with common counsel of the great men,' but the vague use of terms by the chroniclers renders such testimony very unsafe. It is evident however that the theory of assent to legislation was partially recognised, even if it be true that Henry I never called together a legislative assembly except at his accession.2 Of Stephens reign it is scarcely necessary to speak. His election is said in his charter to have been made by assent of clergy and people;' we hear of a General Council in 1136, at which the bestowal of temporalities on a bishop was made in the hearing and with the acclamation' of certain vassals; and at the end of his reign a convention of bishops and other chief men of the kingdom' swore to the terms of peace made between Stephen and his successor. But except on these and a few similar occasions. stitutionalism was dormant. under Stephen. Influence of the National Council in taxation under the Norman kings: There is the same scarcity of proof that the Great Councils had any real weight in the matter of taxation under the Norman kings. William the Conqueror, and his sons, owing to their immense revenues, were Fœd. i. 8. 2 Cf. the Lords' Report on this head. |