5. KING AND PARLIAMENT
Of many of the religious houses, especially of the greater abbeys, the king either was, or came to be considered, the founder. It has already been pointed out what this relation to the Crown implied on the part of the monks. Besides this the Crown could, and in spite of the protests of those chiefly concerned, frequently, if not ordinarily did, appoint abbots and other superiors of religious houses members of the commissions of peace for the counties in which their establishments were situated. They were likewise made collectors for grants and loans to the Crown, especially when the tax was to be levied on ecclesiastical property; and according to the extent of their lands and possessions, like the lay-holders from the Crown, they had to furnish soldiers to fight under the royal standard. In the same way the abbot and other superiors could be summoned by the king to Parliament as barons. The number of religious thus called to the House of Peers at first appears to have depended somewhat upon the fancy of the sovereign; it certainly varied considerably. In 1216, for example, from the North Province of England eleven abbots and eight priors, and from the South seventy-one abbots and priors—in all ninety religious—were summoned to Parliament by Henry III. In 1272 Edward I. called only fifty-seven, mostly abbots, a few, however, being cathedral priors; and in later times the number of monastic superiors in the House of Peers generally included only the twenty-five abbots of the greater houses and the prior of Coventry, and these were accounted as barons of the kingdom.