Both the ancient assembly of the Saxon or Norman warriors, then, and the existing Parliament, would be vainly sought for in the Parliament of the fourteenth century. No violence is done to facts: a new society had been formed which could only engender a political order in accordance with its own character. Great inequality prevailed, and this inequality would naturally reappear between the powers to which it gave birth. The primitive and simple unity which exists in an uncivilized community had disappeared; the wise unity to which a state of civilised society can elevate itself by the diffusion of wealth and intelligence, was still far distant. There was a king, a House of Lords, and a House of Commons: but there was not a Parliament in the political sense which is now attached to that word.
The permanent co-existence of royalty and a great public council, through all these vicissitudes of government and liberty, is an important fact. This council, formed at first by the general assembly of the nation, afterwards restricted to the great barons, and speedily admitting within its circle the representatives of other social conditions, has always been in England the principal organ of the central government. The English monarchy has never succeeded in isolating and enfranchising itself therefrom.
Its Gradual Increase.
It has been narrowed or extended by reason of changes occurring in society: but it has always constituted the condition and form of the monarchy. Popular liberty, so to speak, has always maintained a footing in the central power; the nation has never been completely excluded from participation in its own affairs. The progress of Parliament has been the progress of the government itself. In vain was the House of Commons feeble and inactive at its origin: it did exist, and it formed part of the king's council; it was always present to embrace, in some measure, every opportunity of extending its influence, and aggrandising its position and the part it had to perform. In the fourteenth century, its power was very limited, its attributes very restricted, and its intervention in public affairs very infrequent; but it was impossible that it should not daily increase. In effect it did greatly increase from the time of Edward I. to that of Henry VI. During the wars of the Red and White Roses, the great feudal aristocracy destroyed itself by its contentions. When Henry VII. ascended the throne, there no longer existed a body of great barons capable of offering armed resistance to the royal power. The House of Commons, though strengthened, had not yet emerged from its condition of inferiority, and was incapable of taking the place of the great barons in resistance to royalty. Hence the Tudor despotism in the sixteenth century, the only period at which the maxims of absolute power have prevailed in England; but even in that very century, the House of Commons daily penetrated further into the government, until its power was fully revealed by the great Revolution of the seventeenth century.
I have now given you a glimpse of the space between the period of the definitive formation of the British Parliament, and that at which it sought to obtain its entire dominion. In our subsequent lectures we shall examine the principal phases in the development of this great government during those three centuries.
Lecture XX.
Condition and attributes of the Parliament during the reign of Edward II. (1307-1327).
Empire of favourites.
Struggle of the barons against the favourites.
Aristocratic factions.
Petitions to the king.
Forms of deliberations on this subject.
Deposition of Edward II.