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was in London. A few days afterwards (Aug. 22), he himself proceeded to Ghent, leaving his son, Edward, Prince of Wales, as regent. As soon as the King had departed, the earls seized the opportunity to press their demands. Entering the Exchequer they peremptorily forbade the 'barons' there to levy the aid, the grant of which they asserted had been illegally obtained, until the Charters had been confirmed. Supported by a large military following, and backed up by the citizens of London, they were masters of the situation, and the young Prince and The statute his council found it necessary to yield. The Confirmatio Confirmatio Chartarum, Chartarum, which, although a statute, is drawn up in the passed 10th form of a charter, was passed on the 10th of October, 1297,

Oct. 1297.

3

in a Parliament at which knights of the shire attended as representatives of the commons, as well as the lay and clerical baronage. It was immediately sent over to King Edward at Ghent, and there confirmed by him on the 5th of November following. The former grant of an eighth and a fifth was treated as invalid, and a fresh grant of a ninth was substituted. The constitutional opposition had now been completely successful. The Confirmatio Chartarum was not merely a reissue of Magna Charta and the Charter of the Forest, with special provisions for their distribution throughout the realm and annual publication, but the enactment of a series of new provisions intended

1 Rishanger, Chron. 177.

2 25 Edw. I. st. I, c. 6.

3 In 1298, the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk, doubting the King's sincerity or the binding force of his confirmation at Ghent of his son's acts, demanded a second formal confirmation. This the King reluctantly granted on the 8th of March, 1299, but with a comprehensive proviso, as to the forests, saving the rights of the crown ('salvis semper juramento nostro, jure coronae nostrae, et rationibus nostris atque calumpniis ac omnium aliorum.') The openlyexpressed discontent of the people at this unlooked-for reservation induced Edward to repeat the process shortly afterwards without the obnoxious 'salvo.' The charters were twice again confirmed by Edward, in the Articuli Super Cartas, on March the 6th, 1300, and finally on the 14th of February, 1301, in return for a subsidy of a 'fifteenth.' Notwithstanding this, Edward secretly sought and obtained, in 1305, from Pope Clement V. an absolution from the observance of the Confirmation of the Charters; but to his credit be it said, the absolution, except as to the Forest articles, was never acted upon.

Palgrave's Parl. Writs, i. 63.

to deprive the Crown in the future of its assumed right of arbitrary taxation.

By the 5th section of this statute the King expressly renounced as precedents the 'aids, tasks, and prises' before taken. The next section proceeds :

'vi. Moreover we have granted for us and our heirs, as well to archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and other folk of holy Church, as also to earls, barons, and to all the commonalty of the land, that for no business from henceforth will we take such manner of aids, tasks, nor prises, but by the common assent of [all] the realm, and for the common profit thereof, saving the ancient aids and prises due and accustomed.'

By section vii. the 'maltolte of wools, that is, to wit, a toll of forty shillings for every sack of wool,' is released, and the King grants 'that we shall not take such thing nor any other' without the common assent and good-will of the commonalty of the realm, 'saving to us and our heirs the custom of wools, skins, and leather granted before by the commonalty aforesaid.'1

dendo.

The saving words in this statute would appear to have preserved to the King the ancient custom on wool (as distinguished from the 'evil toll '), and even the legal right of talliaging the towns and royal demesne, a right which he exercised in 1304. But although not formally taken De Tallagio away, talliage without consent of Parliament was clearly non Concecontrary to the interpretation of this statute given in the [A.D. 1297.] De Tallagio non Concedendo. This document is now admitted not to have been an actual statute, but we are at least justified in regarding it 'as good evidence of a principle which, from the time of the Confirmation of the Charters, has been universally received.' The exclusive

1 Statutes of the Realm, i. 124.

2 See the king's writ in Rot. Parl., i. 266. There was also an 'ancient prise' of wines imported, -a duty of two tons from every vessel.

3 Freeman, Growth of English Constitution, [195].

The 'Statutum de Tallagio non Concedendo' is quoted as a statute in the preamble of the Petition of Right, and thenceforth acquired the authority of a statute. In 1637 it was decided to be a statute by the judges: but there is

right of Parliament to impose taxation, though often infringed by the illegal exercise of prerogative, became from this time an axiom of the Constitution.

now no doubt that originally it was a mere 'abstract, imperfect and unauthori tative, of the regent's act of confirmation and of the pardon of the two earls.' -See Stubbs, Select Chart. 487; and Hallam, Midd. Ages, iii. 4, n. The material words are:

'Nullum tallagium vel auxilium per nos vel haeredes nostros de cetero in regno nostro imponatur seu levetur, sine voluntate et assensu communi archiepiscoporum, episcoporum et aliorum praelatorum, comitum, baronum, militum, burgensium, et aliorum hominum in regno nostro.'

[Dowell, Hist. of Taxation, i. 66, gives the following account of the last attempt, made by Edward III. in 1332, at obtaining tallage without consent of Parliament. On obtaining the grant of a fifteenth and a tenth from Parliament, Edward recalled the Commissions for tallage, and promised in future not to cause tallage to be assessed in any other manner than had been the practice in the time of his ancestors, and as he might of right.' Tallage now, says Dowell, fell into disuse.-ED.]

261

CHAPTER VIII.

GROWTH OF PARLIAMENT.

(A.D. 1295-1399.)

23 EDWARD I.; EDWARD II.; EDWARD III.; RICHARD II.

Commune The National Parliament gra

Norman

back an

the affairs of

WE have seen that under Edward I. the Concilium Regni, which for a time, after the Conquest, had been absorbed into the feudal Curia Regis, dually wins again emerged as a really national Parliament, in which all active conthe political elements of the nation were present either in trol over all person or by representation. But although complete in its the nation. representative character, Parliament had yet, as a whole, to make good its powers; and the newly admitted Commons. to vindicate their right to an equal, and ultimately to a preponderating, share in the government of the country. The King was at all times in theory bound to act with the 'counsel and consent' of the great Assembly of the Nation. But by the overthrow of the old feudal party under Henry II., and the break-up of the new national combination which, until the death of De Montfort, had successfully opposed the misgovernment of Henry III., the King had in reality acquired and exercised, through the medium of his Continual or Ordinary Council, a power little less than despotic. In the growth of Parliament, from the date of its definitive establishment under Edward I., we shall trace the process by which the National Council gradually won back that active control over all the affairs of the nation, which the ancient Witenagemot always, and even the feudal Great Councils at times, had undoubtedly exercised.1

1 The comprehensive functions of the Witan have already been discussed, supra, pp. 31-36. Dr. Freeman (Norm. Conq. ii. 90) cites an instance of a debate in the Witenagemot under Edward the Confessor, on a question of war or peace. In 1242, Henry III. being desirous, at the request of his mother Isabella and her husband the Count de la Marche, of resuming the war with France, submitted the question to a Great Council at Westminster, at the same

Parliament

divided into

The exact date of the division of Parliament into two two Houses. Houses is not quite clear, but it was completely effected before the middle of the fourteenth century.

It must be

time demanding an aid. A great debate ensued, of which a detailed account is given in Matthew Paris. The magnates unanimously determined that it was the king's duty to observe the truce then subsisting so long as it was not violated by the French king; and with respect to the aid asked for 'responderunt eidem domino regi praecise quod nullum ad praesens ei facerent auxilium.' An early instance of control by the national council over public expenditure had occurred a few years previously, in 1237, when the thirtieth granted to the king as the price of one of his numerous confirmations of the Charter, had been paid into the hands of four of the barons to be expended at their discretion for the benefit of the king and kingdom.'-Matt. Paris, 581, 582.

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[Guizot, Hist. du Gouv. Rep. ii. 318, points out that the representative system, when established in its fulness, brought back the English Parliament to its original position. Le Parlement est redevenu le grand conseil national où sont débattus et réglés tous les intérêts nationaux.'—ED.]

1 The first mention in the Rolls of Parliament of a separate session occurs in 1332 (Rot. Parl. ii. 66). From 1339 the division may be regarded as permanent. In 1352 the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey was the Chamber of the Commons. (Rot. Parl. ii. 237; Stubbs, Const. Hist. iii. 429, 430.) The advantages of the 'Bi-cameral system' as a guarantee for orderly and permanent government have been forcibly stated by the American writers, Kent, Story, and Lieber, and by Jeremy Bentham and Bowyer in our own country. A brief summary of them is given in Sir Edward Creasy's Eng. Const. 198. But it should be noted that it was only the accidental circumstance of the withdrawal of the clergy from all interference in secular legislation that prevented us from having, as was generally the case in continental constitutions, three houses of Nobles, Clergy, and Commons.-(Supra, pp. 249, 250.) Stubbs (Const. Hist. ii. 189) points out that there was even at one time a possibility that the lawyers and the merchants might have been grouped in separate sub-estates. [Mr. Sheldon Amos, Science of Politics (Int. Sc. Series), 1883, pp. 236-46, discusses the various aspects of the question of the superior advisability of having one or more Chambers,' summing up in favour of 'one broadly representative Chamber,' as best ensuring alike effective representa tion, harmonious co-operation, timely concession, apt adjustment, and habitual preference of the more pressing to the less pressing claim.' On the other hand, a recent writer in the Quarterly Review, No. 316, for October, 1884, in an article on the Nature of Democracies, forecasting the drift of the political situation in our country in the direction of a single Chamber, sees nothing but danger in the prospect. We are drifting,' the article concludes, p. 332, 'towards a type of government associated with terrible events-a Single Assembly, armed with full powers over the Constitution, which it may exercise at pleasure. It will be a theoretically all-powerful Convention, governed by a practically allpowerful Secret Committee of Public Safety, but kept from complete submission to its authority by Obstruction, for which its rulers are always seeking to find a remedy in some kind of moral guillotine.' This seems to be an extreme view, expressed in rather extreme language.. But, on the assumption that there are those who seek such a change, there is no denying the truth of the calmer statement in another article in the same number of the Quarterly, p. 592, on the House of Lords and the Government, that 'to dispense with a Second Chamber, to vest unlimited, unqualified, indisputable, unquestionable power in a single Assembly, is a revolution; a revolution far more complete and searching than the expulsion of a dynasty or the reconstitution of the Third Estate.' Whether such a Revolution is or is not imminent is another question.-ED.]

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