It has been asserted that, during this reign and in earlier times, every session of Parliament involved a fresh election; and that the right of proroguing the existing Parliament to a new session did not appertain to the king. This is an error. It was necessary that a session of Parliament should take place in each year, but not an election. The following fact proves this. The Parliament held under Edward I. in 1300, resumed its session in 1301. The writs summon the deputies of the previous year, except in cases in which a new election was necessary on account of death or absolute inability to serve. In 1305, the king prorogued Parliament on the 21st of March, and allowed the deputies to return home, "Issint qu'ils reveignent prestement et sanz délai, quele houre qu'ils soient autrefois remandez."—"On condition that they should return readily and without delay, at such time as they might be previously recalled." In 1312, during the reign of Edward II., the Parliament separated after having sat two months, and on the same day the king addressed writs to the sheriffs, ordering them to send "the same knights and burgesses—eosdem milites et cives," to Westminster on the 2nd of November following, "to the same Parliament which we have thought should be continued there—ad idem Parliamentum quod ibidem duximus continuandum." This Parliament thus prorogued actually met, and sat from the 2nd of November to the 18th of December, after which it was dissolved. In 1329, during the reign of Edward III., the Parliament which sat at Salisbury, from the 15th to the 31st of October, was adjourned to Westminster, where it held a second session, from the 10th to the 22nd of February, 1330. We meet with similar instances in 1333 and 1372. The Parliaments were, therefore, not elected annually, and the right of prorogation was in full vigour.
Thus was developed and regulated the internal constitution of the Parliament: thus, instead of being merely an accidental meeting, limited to the accomplishment of a single object, it gradually assumed the consistency of a political assembly of periodical obligation.
Voting Of Taxes.
A second general fact, which serves to support the views which I have advanced, is the voting of taxes. There is, perhaps no reign which presents so many instances of arbitrary and illegal imposts as that of Edward III., and yet there is not one which contributed more powerfully to secure the triumph of the principle that taxes are legitimate only when they are freely granted. This principle was incessantly lost sight of practically by the king, who was pressed by necessities, created partly by his wars, and partly by the bad administration of his revenues. His whole reign was spent in efforts to regain, under forms more or less indirect, the right of taxing his subjects at his pleasure; but the Commons, on their side, never ceased to protest against these efforts, sometimes attaching the revocation of an arbitrary tax to the concession of a legal subsidy, and sometimes by endeavouring to introduce the principle of the necessity of consent into all those ways by which the king attempted to elude it. Thanks to their perseverance, the schemes of power were, if not always frustrated, at least always unmasked, and thereby rendered impotent for the future.
Instances of this conflict abound in the Parliaments held in the years 1333, 1340, 1347, 1348, and 1349, which are in general filled only with complaints of the Commons, demanding either the abolition or the diminution of unjust and illegal taxes, which had been imposed without their consent. To all these demands the king replied, sometimes by a formal refusal, sometimes by reference to the consent which had been granted him by the Lords, and sometimes by an assurance that the tax should not be levied for any length of time; but if the Commons threatened to refuse him new subsidies, he felt himself compelled to meet these demands by some new concessions.
Nor was it merely by keeping a firm hand upon the voting of taxes that the House of Commons maintained its rights; it also extended them beyond the concession of subsidies on two important occasions. In 1340, the Parliament, suspecting that a portion of the subsidies voted by it had not found its way into the royal exchequer, appointed certain persons to receive the accounts of the tax-collectors, and required them to give security for the payment of all that they received. This is the first instance of any account whatever being given to Parliament with regard to taxes; it began by desiring to make sure of the fidelity of the receipts, and thus took a first step towards asserting its rights to receive an account of the employment of the funds, that is to say, of their expenditure. In 1354, we perceive the dawn of another parliamentary right, that of the appropriation of the public funds. The Parliament, when granting a tax upon wool, added to its vote the condition that the money derived from this subsidy should be devoted to the expenses of the war then waging, and not to any other purpose.
Share In The Legislation.
After all, it is not to be wondered at that the king and his Parliament were incessantly at variance with regard to subsidies, and mutually occasioned each other continual miscounts. There was then no means of estimating receipts and expenditure beforehand. The king involved himself in an expense without knowing to what sum it would amount; and the Parliament voted a subsidy without knowing what it would produce. In 1371, the Parliament granted a subsidy of £50,000, to be levied at the rate of 22s. 3d. on every parish, which supposed the existence of 45,000 parishes in England. It turned out, however, that there were only 9,000. The king convoked a great council, to which he summoned only half the deputies of the last Parliament, one from each county and borough, "to save expense—ad parcendum sumptibus." The matter was laid before this council, which ordained the assessment of every parish at 116s. instead of at 22s. 3d., in order to raise the sum of £50,000. Great disorder must necessarily have accompanied such ignorance.