A Master of Arts degree could be awarded after three more years of study and teaching. A Doctorate degrees in theology required ten more years of study. A Doctorate in civil or canon law required eight more years. A man with a degree in canon law who wanted to practice in a certain bishop's court had to first satisfy this bishop of his competence.
Another source of legal learning was in London, where the guilds gave rise to the Inns of Court. They used the Register of Writs, the case law of the Year Books, and disputation to teach their students.
For a doctorate in medicine from Oxford or Cambridge, five more years plus two years of practice were required. Surgery was not taught because it was considered manual labor, and there was some feeling that it was a sacrilege and dishonorable. Urinalysis and pulse beat were used for diagnosis. Epilepsy and apoplexy were understood as spasms inside the head. It was known what substances served as laxatives and diuretics. Teeth were extracted, eye cataracts were removed with a silver needle, and skin from the arm was grafted onto a mutilated face.
Englishmen who had collected books on philosophy, medicine, astronomy, and history and literature books from the continent gave their collections to the universities, which started their libraries. Marco Polo's discoveries on his journey to China were known.
The requirements of elementary and higher studies were adjusted in 1393 and began the public school system. William of Wykeham's school, St. Mary College of Winchester in Oxford was the prototype. The curriculum was civil law, canon law, medicine, with astronomical instruments that students made, theology, and the arts. The arts textbooks were still grammar, logic, Donatus, and Aristotle. Many laymen were literate, for instance country gentry, merchants, and craftsmen. Laymen instead of clerics were now appointed to the great offices of state.
Parliament met about twice a year and lasted from two weeks to several months. There was a well-defined group of about fifty barons and a few spiritual peers who were always summoned to Parliament and who composed a House of Lords. "Peer" now meant a member of the House of Lords. All peers had the right to approach the king with advice. The baron peers reasoned that the custom of regular attendance was a right that should be inherited by the eldest son, or by a female heir, if there were no male heirs. However, the theory of nobility by blood as conveying political privilege had no legal recognition. No female could attend Parliament; the husband of a baronness attended Parliament in her stead. Edward III and Richard II created new peers with various titles of dignity, such as duke and marquess, which were above barons and earls. The dukes and marquesses were identified with a territorial designation such as an English county or county town. Whenever a Parliament was assembled the commons were present. The commons was composed of representatives from 100 boroughs and 37 counties. Each new Parliament required an election of representatives. The members of the commons were generally the most prominent and powerful economic and political figures of the county and were repeatedly re-elected. The electors were usually influenced by the sheriff or a powerful lord who suggested suitable men. The wealthy merchants typically represented the boroughs and paid much of the taxes. Under Edward III, the commons took a leading part in the granting of taxes and the presentation of petitions and became a permanent and distinct body, the House of Commons, with a spokesman or "speaker", chosen by the Crown, and a clerk. The speaker came to be an intermediary between the Commons and the king and between the Commons and the Lords. A clerk of Parliament registered its acts and sat with the Lords. A clerk of the Crown superintended the issue of writs and the receipt of the returns and attested the signature of the king on statutes. It became a regular practice for the Chancellor to open Parliament with an opportunity to present petitions after his opening speech. The king then referred them to certain peers and justices, who decided to which court, or Parliament, they should be sent. During the 1300s, the number of barons going to Parliament gradually decreased.
At the 1376 Parliament, ("the Good Parliament") the Commons, which formerly had only consented to taxes, took political action by complaining that the King's councilors had grown rich by war profiteering at the cost of impoverishing the nation and the people were too poor to endure any more taxation for the war and held a hearing on financial malfeasance and dishonesty of two ministers. The chamberlain had extorted enormous sums, had intercepted fines meant for the king's treasury, and had sold a castle to the enemy. The steward had bought debts of the king's. The House of Lords, the High Court of Parliament, found the charges proved and dismissed them permanently from office. This established the constitutional means for impeachment and prosecution by the Commons and removal by the House of Lords of ministers. By this process, there could be no royal intimidation, as there could be in the ordinary courts. The Commons demanded that its members be elected by county citizens rather than appointed by the sheriff.
The roles of Parliament and the King's council are starting to differentiate into legislative and executive, respectively. The legislative function is law-making and the executive is regulation-making that refines and effectuates the laws of Parliament. But the legislative, executive, and judicial authorities have not as yet become so completely separated that they cannot on occasion work together.
Sheriffs dealt directly with the king instead of through an earl.
From 1150 to 1400, resistance was an ordinary remedy for political disagreements. If a popular leader raised his standard in a popular cause, an irregular army could be assembled in a day. (There was no regular army, since England was protected by the sea from invasion.) So misgovernment by a king would be quickly restrained. Society recovered quickly from conflict and civil war because the national wealth consisted chiefly in flocks and herds and in the simple buildings inhabited by the people. In a week after armed resistance, the agricultural worker was driving his team. There was little furniture, stock of shops, manufactured goods, or machinery that could be destroyed.