promise. He did in fact extend and ratify this constitutional principle.'

Another Parliament was held at Westminster April 27, 1309, a full Parliament of clergy, lords, and commons. The latter drew up their grievances in eleven articles. It was on condition that the king should redress them that they promised a grant of a twenty-fifth of their movables.2 The next assembly was in March, 1310, and was composed of Lords. They, too, prayed redress, and appointed twenty-one Lords Ordainers to report the proper ordinances. They were given power until Michaelmas, 1311, and on August 8th of that year Parliament assembled at London to receive the report of the ordainers. They had already issued six ordinances with the assent and confirmation of the King; the Lords now issued thirtyfive additional articles, and October 5th they were confirmed by Edward and published by letters-patent in the form of a charter. The commons had no part in making these ordinances.3

On May 2d, 1322, a very complete Parliament, containing the lords, spiritual and temporal, the beneficed clergy, members of the council and commons, assembled and proceeded to enunciate a most weighty constitutional principle. They declared all ordinances void which had been made or should be made by the king's subjects. Accordingly the ordinances issued by the Lords in 1311 with the consent of the king were revoked. In the future all attempts to make laws without the representatives of the towns were to be illegal. "Matters should be established in Parliament by the king, and by the assent of the prelates, earls, 1 Smith, ibid., 183. ' Ibid., 184.

3 Ibid., 186.

and barons, and the commonalty of the realm. Initiative in legislation, if we may trace to this episode the power of cabinet ministers to initiate, was coupled with responsibility to the people. This saving declaration of the bond between the sovereign and the people is due to the representatives of the towns.1

At the end of the reign of Edward II, the rights of Parliament against the king had been critically tested and well defined. His son, Edward III, was a martial sovereign. The progress made between 1327 and 1377 in the constitution of government bears the stamp of foreign wars. The victories of the English nation on the fields of Crécy and Poitiers were chiefly felt at home by demands for money. Nothing makes legislation move rapidly so much as war. Constitutional progress under Edward III was especially great and rapid. In his reign took place the definite division of Parliament into two houses. The knights of the shire who had previously acted with the barons, were now joined with the citizens and burgesses. In Edward III's first Parliament they were found sitting together as "the Commons. "' 3 The French Wars, the Scottish Wars, made famous by the names of Edward, the Black Prince, and Robert Bruce, are of this reign, as are the names of Stratford and John of Gaunt, and the Plague of 1349. These events and personages, so well known in popular history, had a deep and lasting effect on constitutional development.'

1 Smith, op. cit., 192.

'Gardiner and Mullinger, op. cit., 88.

Gneist, History of English Parliament, 171; Smith, 196–197; Medley, 124, 125, 151; Taswell Langmead, 202.

Smith, 220-221.

"In his campaigns the king had the sympathy of the nation, and Parliament made large grants of money. This constant need of money was a great constitutional advantage. The king was driven to summon Parliament frequently, and the people learned their strength. Petitions of towns and the bargaining of supplies of money against redress of grievances settled the government more firmly than ever upon its true basis popular representation. Even the cabals and intrigues of ministers had a good effect on the constitution, for they tested and shaped the judicial machinery of the central government. Even the Plague brought out a statute, the Statute of Labourers. Thus not only such a disagreeable thing as taxation, but even the ruin and affliction of a whole nation served to develop methods of government and to bring home to the people their relations with the nation, the central government, and public policy. "1

Each assertion of the rights of the Commons was the adoption of a principle of common law.

§ 7. THE MUNICIPAL PRINCIPLE AS THE GERM OF THE NATIONAL LIFE AND MUNICIPAL LAW OF THE ANGLO-SAXON RACE. - Let us examine, first, the parties to this development and then the distribution of rights which it brought about.

One of the corporate interests which furnished legislators was that of the towns, boroughs, and counties. Attendance in behalf of these divisions would be representative. Membership would not come from personal capacity or temporal possession in chief of the King. "The weight of authority," says Taylor,2

"or rather, of inference, sustains the conclusion that

1 See Freeman's Historical Essays, The Reign of Edward III. 'Hannis V. Taylor, Origin and Growth of the English Constitution, I, 467.

the elected knights were not only representative of the whole shire community, but that they were chosen by the whole body of freeholders in the county court. This seems anomalous. A knight is elected to represent freeholders in the national council, to which, with concessions to the remnants of feudal theory which remained, one would expect him to belong as a member of a special class. And it has been thought necessary to explain why the knight of the shire should be closely allied with the class of freeholders just below him. The explanation, too, overlooks the natural question why the freeholders did not represent themselves. There had once been a distinction between the county and borough members. At times, however, the duty of attendance at Parliament, especially when the only object was the granting of taxes, became very burdensome to members of the knighthood. "The Shire Courts were consequently compelled to return men of lower rank. Thus, in 1325, only twenty-seven men were of knightly status. But the interest of the landowner predominates every now and then, and the knight finds himself drawn to the national assembly. He, it is, who would naturally be called upon to attend, and often to the exclusion of the burgesses.2

"1

"The external position of the boroughs was weak. Their desire to escape the burden of representation left them at the mercy or manipulation of the sheriff. The merchants, moreover, whose wealth consisted of wool, were, probably, in the main, country gentry and members of the Shire Courts. As such they lost touch with their

own fellow-townsmen and were not unwilling for the sake of their own private gain to enter into their own separate dealings with the king," a condition similar to that with which the principle of honest local self-government has to contend to-day. "Another reason for the tendency toward the absorption of the representation of the borough in that of the shire is found in the fact that the character of the persons elected, as well as the qualifications of the electors, were both determined by the nature of the only court or assembly in which the sheriff could constitutionally execute the writ under whose mandate representatives were chosen. The sheriff executed the writs, and could only act in accordance with those methods of procedure with which the shire community had been immemorially familiar.'

"Thus it was that a fortunate and early assimilation of interests no less than of classes, brought about a close union between two classes, intended originally (not by nature, but by feudal notions) to represent different interests, namely, those connected with real and personal property respectively, or, in other words, land and merchandise, cities and counties. " The burgesses and the knights of the shire learned that their interests were common, and acted together. It was, in fact, not only what we think of as the Commons that won the liberties of England, but the knights of the shire, as representative of these local divisions.'

The members of the Commune Concilium, originally called to consent to taxation, and representing the

1 Medley, 153-154.

' Taylor, I, 468.

Medley, 151. See, for the effect of this union, Freeman, Growth of the English Constitution, 91.

Stubbs, Constitutional History, II, 560.