Before Edward returned from Palestine, his regents summoned to a Parliament held at Hilarytide 1273, not only prelates and barons, but also four knights from each shire and four citizens from each city.[123] The purpose of the convention was the taking of the oath of allegiance to the new king, and the call was prompted doubtlessly by the need of having the whole nation held loyal to the absent and still uncrowned Edward. Here was another instance of the growing appreciation of the usefulness of the commons.
Edward’s first Parliament, 1275, and the Statute of Westminster
There was no taxation in the reign of Edward I, except as the clergy taxed the people for the prosecution of the crusade, until Edward called his first Parliament on the 22d April, 1275, at Westminster. The composition of the assemblage is uncertain; the implication of the Chronicler is that it was a Parliament of magnates,[124] but the introductory clause of the Statute of Westminster has it otherwise.[125] “These be the Acts of King Edward ...” it says, “by his council and by the assent of archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons and the community of the realm being thither assembled.” The Statute of Westminster, which was composed of some fifty-one articles, included a provision for regulating the feudal aids which were required upon the knighting of the lord’s son or on the event of the marriage of his daughter. Twenty shillings on the knight’s fee and twenty shillings from each parcel of land held in socage yielding twenty pounds annually, were to be the maximum rates thereafter.
A custom on wool
The great advantages gained by the nation under the Statute of Westminster were not won without a price. The same Parliament made a grant of a custom on wool, woolfells, and leather.[126] The parties to the grant were essentially the same as those who registered their assent in the preamble of the statute; there was, however, this singular difference, that it was done “at the instance and request of the merchants.” The amount levied was “a half-mark from each sack of wool, and a half-mark from each three hundred woolfells, which make a sack, and one mark from each last of leather, exported from the realm of England,” etc.
The importance, both in a forward view and in retrospect of this grant of a wool custom, is very great. Parliament in granting this custom assumed the power of assenting to a tax which previously had been considered within the peculiar province of the king. It made a definite statement of what was to be taken subsequently as the legal rate of duty chargeable upon exports of wool. The rate, which since the beginning of the century had been agreed upon between royal officers and merchants as their reasonable charge was this half mark (6s. 8d.) on each sack of wool weighing 364 pounds, or on the estimated equivalent of a sack, 300 woolfells, and a mark upon each last (or load) of leather.[127] Exactions above this rate were known as mala tolta, the evil tolls, and the phrase had been shortened to the single word maletolt. The forty-first chapter of Magna Carta had promised to all merchants freedom “from all evil tolls,” though it continued the “ancient and right customs.” Apparently, however, Henry III with respect to this clause as in many another similar instance, did not deem himself bound to adhere scrupulously to his promise. The Parliament of Edward I at Westminster in 1275 settled the matter; the “great and ancient custom” on wool was legally determined, and thereafter a larger exaction would be regarded as illegal.[128]
Edward’s Second Parliament, 13th October, 1275
Edward summoned a second Parliament for the 13th October following in a manner which gives ground for the presumption that the presence of the knights of the shire in a parliament designed primarily for the raising of money, was already becoming a custom. The point cannot be better illustrated than by a translation of the writ itself.[129] “Since we have bidden the prelates and magnates of our realm,” so it goes, “to be present at our Parliament which we will hold ... at Westminster, to treat with us both concerning the condition of our realm and of certain of our business which we will declare to them at the same time, and as it is expedient that two knights from the county above-mentioned be present at the same Parliament from the body of discreet and lawful knights of the same county, by the reasons above-stated we command you that you cause to be elected in your full county-court (in pleno comitatu) by the assent of the same county, the said two knights and that you cause them to come to us at Westminster in behalf of the community of the said county on the said day, to treat with us and with the above-mentioned prelates and magnates about the above-stated business. And omit none of it.”