occurred to somebody, ‘Why not send these elected knights or gentlemen to meet the King himself in some general assembly? Each of them can speak for his own county, and the King will get a fair idea of what amount of money the whole of England is able to give him.’
The first Parliaments in the reign of Henry III.Now no general assembly other than that of the Great Council of barons existed, so the elected knights from the counties and the elected citizens from the towns used occasionally to be called to the Great Council, and there met the barons and the King. Then there would be a great Talking or ‘Parliamentum’ (French parler, to talk). Such knights and citizens would naturally grow bolder when they found themselves met together, and found that the barons were much the same sort of fellows as themselves, and had the same ideas about the King’s extravagance and his ridiculous foreign wars. It was on such occasions that they thoroughly realized that the barons were their natural leaders. Soon, they too would begin to present petitions about the grievances of their districts, and to beg the King to make particular laws. Earl Simon has got much fame because, while he was ruling in 1265, there met, for the first time, in one assembly, barons, bishops, abbots, ‘knights of the shire’ and citizens. You will see in the next chapter how Edward I shaped these assemblies into regular Parliaments, and what powers they won for themselves.
My Father’s Chair.
Priest and People and Lords and Crown.
I sit on all of ’em fair and square,
And that is the reason it don’t break down.
