Of itself this scheme of reform is relatively unimportant. But taken with the demand of the magnates that twelve of their number supervise the expenditure of such money as they should grant to the king, it assumes some significance. It points toward the growing tendency on the part of the barons to assume control, not only of the granting of taxes, but of the expenditure of the money so raised as well. For some centuries thereafter the question as to whether that control should lie with the king or subjects was to be a prime subject of contention.
It would be a fruitless and uninteresting task to illustrate further the control over matters of taxation exercised by the Council during this part of the reign of Henry III. The instances in which the royal requests were refused, and the occasions when the king attempted to evade the refusal by private solicitation were not infrequent.[102] A single citation may be excused, however, because of the element of sinister humor which pervades it. Henry asked the Council for money on the 9th February, 1248, and was greeted with a demand for a justiciar, chancellor, and treasurer to be appointed by the Council itself. This appeared distasteful to Henry, who was learning the trick of independence. After a delay of some five months he refused compliance; whereat he discovered that no grant was forthcoming from the Council.[103] Thereupon Henry announced to his good citizens of London that he would pass the Christmastide with them, in order that he might freely accept of their New Year’s presents.[104]
It would be too much, it seems, to say that the numerous cases in which the Council denied to the king the financial assistance which he urged upon them, prove the full control, in any modern sense, of this body over taxation.Representation as it existed in Henry’s National Council The relation of Council to king was still personal; the barons granted their support or refused it, as vassal to feudal lord, by no means as representatives of the nation to the government. The grants seem, indeed, to have been binding upon the nation at large, and consequently it might be argued that the barons were really representatives of the nation, capable of acting for it. But the argument is based upon a confusion of terms; representation in the modern sense was not at that time in England invented or thought of. A baron who by virtue of his prominence or his power makes a promise which is binding upon those of less prominence or less power, is not a representative but a small despot. Such a position the barons held who composed the National Council under Henry III; they acted for the nation, but they were not in the modern sense representatives. The inference is readily drawn, then, that a body thus constituted could not exercise any more than a personal control over taxation.
The time was at hand, however, when the period of transition to the impersonal relation should begin,—the relation which exists between representatives of the nation and the government as personified in the king, the relation recognizable to-day between the layers of taxes and the spenders of the proceeds of taxation.
Knights of the shires called to the Council, 1254
In 1254, during Henry’s absence in Gascony, the regents, Queen Eleanor and Earl Richard Cornwall, took steps to amplify the Council for the time being with the lesser feudal tenants for the purpose of laying taxes.[105] John, at his St. Albans Council in 1213, had had recourse to a similar expedient, though the principle involved was quite different. In the earlier instance a representative reeve and four men from each township and the royal demesne were summoned in order to assess the amount due in restitution to the clergy. In the latter the royal writs directed that from each of the counties two “lawful and discreet knights” be sent up to Westminster, “who together with the knights from the other counties whom we have had summoned for the same day, shall arrange what aid they are willing to pay us in our need.” The knights were to be chosen by the counties themselves, probably in the county court, since there the machinery of election already was in existence. The election of knights by the body of suitors who composed the courts of the counties was by no means a new thing; for eighty years there is evidence of the election of such representatives for local purposes, and it would be no startling innovation to extend this function of the courts to the election of representatives in a national council. In the present instance, furthermore, there is in the writ an implication, though the deduction is hazardous, that the matter of the aid received previous consideration in the county courts themselves. “And you yourself carefully set forth to the knights and others of the said counties,” so continues the instructions to the sheriff, “our need and how urgent is our business, and effectually persuade them to pay us an aid sufficient for the time being; so that the aforesaid ... knights at the aforesaid time shall be able to give definite answer concerning the said aid to the aforesaid council, for each of the said counties.” The upshot of this Council was disappointing to the crown; nothing resulted except a renewal of complaints against the royal administration. Simon de Montfort, whose position as the defender of the rights of Parliament, was as yet quite misapprehended, took occasion to warn the Council against the policy of the king.[106]
The events of the next fifteen years, vital as they are to constitutional history, must be briefly gone over. It is the period of the Barons’ War and the Provisions of Oxford, and finally of Simon de Montfort’s famous Parliament of 1265. But the years did not intimately affect taxation, save as they provided more or less definitely for the body which should ultimately have control over the granting of taxes. Taxation was a prime cause of the baronial irritation which led to the trouble with the king, but the conflict was not a moving cause in the final attainment by Parliament of exclusive power over taxation. The chain of events, however, in so far as they are pertinent to the subject, must be traced.
Strife between king and Parliament