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The Charter and its Guardian, Parliamen
Henry III, 1216 - 1272; Part 1

Henry III, 1216 - 1272; Part 1

In following the reign of Henry III we must look for signs of the growth of Parliament. And we must recognize what it is that we seek. It is not merely the existence of an assembly which governed or took a share in the Government; such an assembly already existed in the "Council" mentioned in the twelfth article of Magna Carta, and of course it was far older. All English kings, even back into remote Saxon days, had a council whose advice they asked, if they did not always take it. The Saxon Witan in theory gave its consent to the king's laws and taxes, approved the appointment of his ministers, even on occasion could elect or depose a king. When the Normans succeeded, the substance of the Witan's powers came to the king's Court or Council - the Curia Regis - that body of many shapes and many functions, whose nature has been already explained. But both the Witan, where the qualification was nominally wisdom, and the Curia Regis, whose members held land direct from the king, differed essentially from Parliament. They were to a certain extent governing assemblies, and so is Parliament But Parliament is more; it is a representative governing assembly. Both Witan and Curia Regis were class bodies; Parliament is a national body.

What is to be sought, then, is the alloy of representatives with the governing assembly. This will fuse the Curia Regis into a Parliament. To anticipate for a moment the course of the story, we may remark that the year 1295 saw gathered the "Model" Parliament, more completely representative of England even than the Parliament of to-day (Because the lower clergy sent representatives). We remember also that the " Eighty years' struggle over the Charter" ended in 1297: to be precise, it covered eighty-two years. If we go back from the Model Parliament of 1295, we alight on the assembly at St. Albans in 1213, which is the first example of representatives called to consult with the Curia Regis. True, that they only advised: they were admitted by courtesy, not by right. None the less it was one of those first steps which count much. It is not a little curious that precisely the same period of eighty-two years separates both these pairs of events.

Chronology

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