The Commons In Parliament.
The Parliament which was held in the month of August, 1296, was constituted in the same way as its predecessor, and the votes in it were similarly divided. The barons and knights granted only a twelfth part of their moveable property, and the burgesses an eighth.
In 1297, a Parliament met at Salisbury, but the writs by which it was convened are lost; we do not therefore possess any direct proof of the presence of deputies from counties and boroughs in this assembly; however, there is extant a writ of the 30th of July, in the same year, in which Edward states that the towns and counties have granted him subsidies, and this indirect proof may supply the want of the writs of convocation.
During this same year (1297), the quarrel broke out between the aristocracy and the crown on the subject of the confirmation of the charters, and the Earls of Norfolk and Hereford, by their bold steadfastness, secured victory for the national cause, and extorted from the king a complete and definite sanction to the rights and institutions whose maintenance they vindicated. We find at this time that two deputies were summoned from each county to receive from the hands of the prince-regent those charters which had been confirmed by the king.
From the time when these charters were definitely confirmed, the convocation of deputies from the counties and boroughs was no longer an irregular and arbitrary transaction,—it became a necessity. Accordingly, their presence in the Parliaments is constantly attested by authentic proofs.
Thus they were admitted to the Parliament convened at York, on the 15th of April, 1298; the writs of convocation of which are preserved. They were also present in the Parliament held at Lincoln on the 29th of December, 1299. The writs of convocation for this Parliament are similar to those which convened the preceding one. They summon the same deputies who had been present at the last Parliament, enjoining further that substitutes should be chosen in the place of any who had died since that time. We find, moreover, that writs were addressed to the chancellors of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, requiring them to send to the Parliament four or five deputies in the case of Oxford, and two or three from Cambridge; and directing them to select such deputies from among those who were most discreet and most learned in the law—de discretioribus et in jure scripto magis expertis prædictæ Universitatis.
Composition Of Parliament.
Lastly, the writs of convocation for the Parliament held at Westminster on the 24th of July, 1302, are in all respects similar to the preceding.
I will not further trace this series of facts, which henceforth ceases to be remarkable because of its unvarying uniformity. Suffice it to say that all the Parliaments which were held during the last five years of the reign of Edward I. were of the same nature and composed of the same members. Two of these, however, deserve special attention. The first is that held at Westminster in 1305. The particulars of its dissolution are preserved to us, as well as those which relate to the mode in which the petitions which already flowed into it were received. The second is that which met at Carlisle in 1307. We have the lists of the bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons, &c., who sat in it. The number of earls or barons amounts to eighty-six, that of the bishops and abbots to sixty-eight. There were besides a great number of deputies from the inferior clergy, forming the lower house of the ecclesiastical convocation; and there were, moreover, two knights from each county, two citizens from each city, and two burgesses from each borough.