Edward's council was the highest tribunal. It comprised the Chancellor, Treasurer and other great officers of state, the justices of the three courts, the master or chief clerks of the Chancery, and certain selected prelates and barons. The council assisted the king in considering petitions. Most petitions to the King were private grievances of individuals, including people of no social rank, such as prisoners. Other petitions were from communities and groups, such as religious houses, the two universities, boroughs, and counties. These groups sometimes formed alliances in a common cause. Women sometimes petitioned. From 1293, the petitions were placed in four stacks for examination by the King and council, by the Chancery, by the Exchequer, or by the justices. Many hours were spent hearing and answering petitions. From 1305, the petitions were presented to the king in full Parliament.
The king still exercised a power of legislation without a full Parliament. He might in his council issue proclamations. The Chief Justices still had, as members of the king's council, a real voice in the making of laws. The king and his justices might, after a statute has been made, put an authoritative interpretation upon it. Royal proclamations had the same force as statutes while the king lived; sometimes there were demands that certain proclamations be made perpetual by being embodied in statutes, e.g. fixing wages. There was no convention that agreement or even the presence of representatives was required for legislation. The idea that the present can bind the absent and that the majority of those present may outvote the minority was beginning to take hold. Edward I's councilors and justices took an oath to give, expedite, and execute faithful counsel; to maintain, recover, increase, and prevent the diminution of, royal rights; to do justice, honestly and unsparingly; to join in no engagements which may present the councilor from fulfilling his promise; and to take no gifts in the administration of justice, save meat and drink for the day. These were in addition to other matters sworn to by the councilors.
Parliament soon was required to meet at least once a year at the Great Hall at Westminster located beside the royal palace. London paid its representatives 10s. per day for their attendance at Parliament. From the time of Edward II, the counties paid their knight- representatives 4s. daily, and the boroughs paid their burgess- representatives 2s. daily. When it convened, the Chancellor sat on the left and the Archbishop of Canterbury on the right of the king. Just below and in front of the king his council sits on wool sacks brought in for their comfort from wool stored nearby. It answers questions. Behind them on the wool sacks sit the justices, who may be called upon to give legal advice, e.g. in framing statutes. Then come the spiritual and lay barons, then the knights, and lastly the elected burgesses and citizens. Lawmaking became a function of Parliament, of which the King's council is a part, instead of a function of the king with his council and justices. The common people now had a voice in lawmaking, though legislation could be passed without their consent. The first legislation proposed by the commons was alteration of the forest laws governing the royal pleasure parks. Such a statute was passed in a bargain for taxes of a percentage of all movables, which were mostly foodstuffs and animals. The king offered to give up the royal right to tax merchandise for a new tax: customs on exports. The barons and knights of the county agreed to pay an 11th, the burgesses, a 7th, and the clergy a 10th on their other movables. In time, several boroughs sought to be included in the county representation so they could pay the lower rate. This new system of taxation began the decline of the imposition of feudal aids, knights' fees, scutages, carucage, and tallage, which had been negotiated by the Exchequer with the reeves of each town, the sheriff and county courts of each county, and the bishops of each diocese.
The staple [depot or mart, from the French "estaple">[ system began when the export of wool had increased and Parliament initiated customs duties of 6s.8d. on every sack of wool, woolfells [sheepskin with wool still on it], or skins exported in 1275. These goods had to be assessed and collected at certain designated ports. Certain large wool merchants, the merchants of the staple, were allowed to have a monopoly on the purchase and export of wool. Imports of wine were taxed as tunnage as before, that is there was a royal right to take from each wine ship one cask for every ten at the price of 20s. per cask.
In 1297, Edward I confirmed the Magna Carta and other items. Judgments contrary to Magna Carta were nullified. The documents were to be read in cathedral churches as grants of Edward and all violators were to be excommunicated. He also agreed not to impose taxes without the consent of Parliament after baronial pressure had forced him to retreat from trying to increase, for a war in France, the customs tax on every exported sack of wool to 40s. from the 6s. 8d. per sack it had been since 1275. The customs tax was finally fixed at 10s. for every sack of wool, 2s. for each tun [casket] of wine, and 6d. for every pound's worth of other goods. The "tenths and fifteenths" tax levied on income from movables or chattels became regular every year. Edward also confirmed the Forest Charter, which called for its earlier boundaries. And he agreed not to impound any grain or wool or and like against the will of the owners, as had been done before to collect taxes. Also, the special prises or requisitions of goods for national emergency were not to be a precedent. Lastly, he agreed not to impose penalties on two earls and their supporters for refusing to serve in the war in France when the king did not go.
The Magna Carta is the first statute. From 1299, statutes were recorded in a Statute Roll as they were enacted.
By the end of the 1200s, the King's wardrobe, where confidential matters such as military affairs were discussed in his bedroom, became a department of state with the King's privy seal. The keeper of the privy seal was established as a new office by Edward I in 1318. The wardrobe paid and provisioned the knights, squires, and sergeants of the king and was composed mostly of civil servants. It traveled with the King. The Crown's treasure, plate, tents, hangings, beds, cooking utensils, wine, and legal and financial rolls were carried on pack horses or in two-wheeled carts drawn by oxen, donkeys, or dogs. The people in the entourage rode horses or walked. The other two specialized administrative bodies were the Exchequer, which received most of the royal revenue and kept accounts at Westminster, and the Chancery, which wrote royal writs, charters, and letters, and kept records.
The chief functions of administration in the 1300s were performed by the council, chancery, wardrobe, chamber [room off wardrobe for dressing and for storage], and exchequer. Many of the chancellors had come from the wardrobe and chamber. In time, the chancellor ceased to be a part of the king's personal retinue and to follow the court. The chancery became primarily a department of central administration rather than a secretariat and record-keeping part of the royal household. The king used a privy seal to issue directives to the chancery. Edward III made some merchants earls and appointed them to be his ministers. He did not summon anyone to his council who did not have the confidence of the magnates [barons, earls, bishops, and abbots].
There was a recoinage due to debasement of the old coinage. This increased the number of coins in circulation. The price of wheat went from about 7s. in 1270 to about 5s. per quarter in 1280. Also the price of an ox went from 14s. to 10s. Then there were broad movements of prices, within which there were wide fluctuations, largely due to the state of the harvest. From 1280 to 1290, there was runaway inflation. In some places, both grain and livestock prices almost doubled between 1305 and 1310. Wheat prices peaked at 15s.5d. a quarter in the famine year of 1316. In 1338, prices dropped and remained low for twenty years. The poor were hurt by high prices and the lords of the manors were hurt by low prices.
As before, inadequate care and ignorance of nutrition caused many infant deaths. Accidents and disease were so prevalent that death was always near and life insecure. Many women died in childbirth.