The barons, in October, 1255, if Matthew Paris has not fallen into error, considered that the provisions of chapters 12 and 14 of John’s Magna Carta were still in force, although they had been omitted in the reissues of Henry III. When the king asked a liberal aid in furtherance of his scheme for securing the crown of Sicily for his son Edmund, those present at the Council deliberately refused, on the ground that some of their peers had not been summoned “according to the tenor of Magna Carta.” This incident illustrates the extreme constitutional importance rightly attached by the barons to the rigid observance by the Crown of the established usage relative to the convening of Parliament.[[516]]
[498]. On the whole subject of the commune concilium, cf. supra 151-4 and also 173-4.
[499]. E.g. Sir William R. Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I. 14, emphatically declares that one of the two cardinal principles of the entire Charter is “that representation is a condition precedent to taxation.”
[500]. This is illustrated by a comparison of the words used in the text with the phrases in which Henry and his sons expressed “the common consent” to important ordinances and charters: e.g. (a) the Assize of Clarendon in 1166 (Select Charters, 143) bears to have been ordained by Henry II. “de consilio omnium baronum suorum”; (b) John’s Charter surrendering his kingdom to Innocent in 1213 declares that he acted “communi consilio baronum nostrorum” (Select Charters, 285); (c) Matthew Paris makes Earl Richard complain to his brother Henry III. in 1255 that the Apulian business had been entered on “sine consilio suo et assensu barnagii” (Chron. Maj. V. 520).
[501]. See Ramsay, Angevin Empire, p. 54, and authorities there cited.
[502]. See L. O. Pike, House of Lords, 92, "There is no trace of any desire on the part of the barons to be summoned to the king’s great Council as a privilege and an honour before the reign of John." Cf. also Report on the Dignity of a Peer, I. 389.
[503]. See Prof. Medley, Engl. Const. Hist., 123.
[504]. See Dialogus de Scaccario, II. x. D., “baronias scilicet majores seu minores.”
[505]. Cf. supra, c. 2.