Parliament of England
The Parliament of England began not with a vote or a constitution, but with a king who needed money. Henry III, who had inherited the throne at nine years old, discovered that raising taxes required something his predecessors had largely avoided: asking permission. That single constraint, repeated across centuries of warfare, debt, and dynastic crisis, would grow into one of the most consequential legislative institutions in history. By the time the Parliament of England was finally dissolved in 1707, it had put a king on trial, executed him, abolished itself, reconstituted itself, and handed the crown to a foreign prince on its own terms. How did a feudal advisory council evolve into a body capable of all that? The answer runs through barons at Runnymede, a reformer killed in battle, a chapel converted into a debating chamber, and a Speaker who famously told a king he had no eyes to see and no tongue to speak.
The witan, the assembly of magnates and clergy convened by the first kings of England, met regularly at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun. Its purpose was practical: it kept distant powerful men connected to the Crown, produced Anglo-Saxon law codes, and decided questions of war and peace. In 1051, the witan conducted the state trial of Earl Godwin. It also negotiated with Aethelred the Unready and Cnut the Great on behalf of the English nation, though it was never an elected body.
After the Norman Conquest of 1066, the witan was replaced by the curia regis, and the king periodically enlarged it into a magnum concilium to discuss national business. The Domesday survey was planned at the Christmas council of 1085; the Constitutions of Clarendon were made at the 1164 council; and the trial of Thomas Becket took place in the same setting. What the magnum concilium notably lacked was any role in approving taxation. The king could levy direct land taxes through the geld, which was discontinued after 1162, or carucage, briefly used between 1194 and 1224, without needing the council's consent.
That changed under the financial pressures of the late 12th century, when the Crown needed money to finance the Third Crusade, ransom Richard I, and fight the Plantagenet-Capetian wars. In 1188, the great council granted Henry II the Saladin tithe, acting for the first time as a representative body capable of consenting on behalf of all taxpayers. That precedent mattered. Historian Judith Green observed that earlier assemblies had been "more concerned with ratification and publicity than with debate", but the granting of the Saladin tithe gave the council a new kind of authority.
King John's reign brought the underlying tensions to a crisis. He alienated the barons through partiality in dispensing justice, heavy financial demands, and abuses of feudal rights over reliefs, aids, and incidents. In 1215, the barons forced him to accept Magna Carta, a charter resting on three assumptions that would shape parliamentary development for centuries: that the king was subject to the law, that he could only make law and levy taxation with the consent of the community of the realm, and that the obedience owed by subjects was conditional rather than absolute.
Clause 12 of Magna Carta stated that certain taxes could only be levied through the common counsel of the kingdom. Clause 14 specified that this counsel was to come from bishops, earls, and barons. Although the no-taxation-without-common-counsel clause was deleted from later reissues of the charter, subsequent kings adhered to its principle anyway. Magna Carta eventually acquired the status of fundamental law.
The word parliament itself came from the French parlement, first used in the late 11th century. By the mid-1230s it had become the common name for meetings of the great council, with the first recorded use in this sense dating to 1236. After the 1230s, Westminster became the fixed normal meeting place for Parliament, which tended to gather according to the legal year: in January or February for the Hilary term, in April or May for the Easter term, in July, and in October for the Michaelmas term.
Most parliaments in the 13th century had between forty and eighty attendees, drawn from the landed aristocracy, the clergy, and the towns. Historian John Maddicott noted that "the main division within parliament was less between lords and commons than between the landed and all others, lower clergy as well as burgesses". The Commons were not regularly summoned until the 1290s, after the Model Parliament of November 1295, in which Philip IV of France's attempt to seize Aquitaine had forced Edward I to broaden the base of consent. Of the thirty parliaments held between 1274 and 1294, knights attended only four and burgesses only two.
The June Parliament of 1264, convened by Simon de Montfort after his victory at the Battle of Lewes, was notable for including knights of the shire who were expected to deliberate on political matters, not merely assent to taxation. The most famous of Montfort's assemblies, held in January 1265, went further still: burgesses were summoned alongside knights of the shire for the first time. Montfort was killed later that year at the Battle of Evesham.
In 1341, under Edward III, the Commons met separately from the nobility and clergy for the first time, producing what was effectively an Upper Chamber and a Lower Chamber. The Upper Chamber became known as the House of Lords from 1544 onward. Edward's costly involvement in the Hundred Years' War meant he needed regular financing, and it was established during his reign that no law could be made and no tax levied without the consent of both Houses and the sovereign. During the Good Parliament of 1376, the presiding officer of the lower chamber, Peter de la Mare, complained of heavy taxes, demanded an accounting of royal expenditures, and criticised the king's management of the military. The Commons even impeached some of the king's ministers. De la Mare was imprisoned for his boldness, but was released after Edward III died.
Henry III became king at nine years old when his father John died during the First Barons' War. The regency government that ruled during his minority leaned heavily on great councils, which even consented to the appointment of royal ministers. Historian John Maddicott wrote that the minority made the great council "an indispensable part of the country's government" with "a degree of independent initiative and authority which central assemblies had never previously possessed".
In 1232, Peter des Roches became chief minister, and his nephew Peter de Rivaux accumulated a large number of offices, including lord keeper of the privy seal and keeper of the wardrobe, without the approval of the magnates. At a great council in April 1234, the king was forced to remove Rivaux and others. That moment was the first occasion in English history that a king had been compelled to change his ministers by a great council or parliament.
The crisis deepened in 1258. Henry had promised the pope he would pay papal debts in exchange for help securing the Sicilian throne for his son Edmund. The barons, furious, forced a reluctant king to accept the Provisions of Oxford at that year's Oxford Parliament. Parliament was now to meet three times a year on a fixed schedule: the octave of Michaelmas on the 6th of October, Candlemas on the 3rd of February, and the 1st of June. Twelve elected baronial representatives, together with a baronial council, could act on legislation even when Parliament was not in session. Under these provisions, Parliament was, in the words of contemporaries, "established formally (and no longer merely by custom) as the voice of the community". Henry fought back. The pope released him from his oath to the Provisions in April 1261, and Henry publicly renounced them in May. Simon de Montfort, the leader of the reformers, was eventually killed at the Battle of Evesham in 1265, and Parliament authorised the Dictum of Kenilworth in August 1266, nullifying everything Montfort had done.
In 1548, the Crown granted the House of Commons a permanent meeting place: St Stephen's Chapel in the Palace of Westminster. Henry VIII had been the last monarch to use the palace as a residence, and after the suppression of the college attached to it, the royal chapel was converted into a debating chamber. That room served as the home of the House of Commons until it was destroyed by fire in 1834.
The physical structure of the chapel proved consequential. Where most legislatures came to sit in circular chambers, the benches of the British Houses of Parliament took the form of choir stalls because that was how the chapel had been arranged. When political parties emerged in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the governing party sat to the right of the Speaker and the opposition to the left, a layout determined by the architecture of a medieval chapel. The custom of members bowing to the Speaker's chair is said to derive from the earlier practice of bowing toward the chapel altar, a habit that outlasted the altar itself.
From the 1540s the presiding officer in the Commons became formally known as the Speaker, having previously been called the prolocutor or parlour. The role had existed in a semi-official form since Peter de Montfort had presided over the Oxford Parliament of 1258. It was not a comfortable position. When the House was displeased, it fell to the Speaker to deliver that news to the monarch. This gave rise to the tradition whereby the newly elected Speaker is dragged toward the chair by other members, a gesture recalling the genuine reluctance of earlier occupants to take the post.
The franchise during the Tudor period was extremely narrow. Historians estimate that as little as three percent of the adult male population could vote for members of the House of Commons, there was no secret ballot, and elections could be controlled by powerful local figures whose tenants and dependents voted as directed. Even so, the election in Haverfordwest in 1571 was actually overturned for irregularity, indicating that standards existed even when they were violated. Welsh representatives entered the Parliament for the first time following the Laws in Wales Acts of 1535-42, with the first Welsh member elected in 1542. To preserve existing practice, Welsh voters were placed in single-member districts, the first use of such a parliamentary structure.
In January 1642, Charles I walked into the House of Commons with a group of soldiers and tried to arrest John Pym and four other members for alleged treason. The Five Members had been warned in advance and had already left. Charles asked the Speaker, William Lenthall, where they had gone. Lenthall famously refused to say. That confrontation was a point of no return. Within months, the English Civil War had begun with the Battle of Edgehill in October 1642.
In December 1648, Pride's Purge removed from Parliament those members who did not support the New Model Army. The remaining Rump Parliament enacted legislation to try Charles I for treason. The outcome was never in doubt, and he was executed in January 1649. Charles I was the last English monarch ever to enter the House of Commons.
Oliver Cromwell dissolved the Rump in April 1653 over disagreements about religious policy and elections. He then convened a parliament of religious radicals known as Barebone's Parliament, followed by the unicameral First Protectorate Parliament, which sat from September 1654 to January 1655, and the Second Protectorate Parliament, which met in two sessions between 1656 and 1658, the first session unicameral and the second bicameral. When the Second Protectorate Parliament offered Cromwell the crown, he refused. But the structure he approved in the Humble Petition and Advice, with an elected Commons, a Lords containing peers of the realm, and a constitutional monarchy assisted by a Privy Council, became the template for all future parliaments. It was also during the sitting of the first Rump Parliament that members of the Commons first became known as MPs.
The events of 1649-1660 demonstrated that Parliament could survive without a monarchy or a House of Lords. Future English monarchs took that lesson seriously. To this day, at the State Opening of Parliament, the doors of the House of Commons are slammed in the face of the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod before he strikes three times with his staff to be admitted, a ceremony tracing its symbolism to the Commons' hard-won right to control its own chamber.
James II's open Catholicism and his effort to lift restrictions on Catholics holding public office led Protestant opponents to invite William of Orange to take the throne. William assembled a force estimated at 15,000 soldiers, 11,000 foot and 4,000 horse, and landed at Brixham in south-west England in November 1688. When prominent officers, including John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, defected to William, James fled. Parliament offered the Crown not to James's Catholic infant son James Francis Edward Stuart but to his Protestant daughter Mary. Mary refused to rule alone. William and Mary agreed to rule jointly.
As the price of William's kingship, Parliament secured the 1689 Bill of Rights and, later, the 1701 Act of Settlement. These statutes formally established the supremacy of Parliament for the first time in English law, marking the beginning of constitutional monarchy in England. The royal veto over legislation had been applied several times during the 16th and 17th centuries; it has not been exercised since 1707.
In 1707, the Acts of Union dissolved both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland, replacing them with the Parliament of Great Britain, based in the former home of the English parliament at Westminster. The Parliament of Great Britain itself was later absorbed into the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1801. The long journey from the witan meetings of the 10th century to that 1707 dissolution had taken the better part of eight hundred years, and the Parliament of England had met in places as varied as Carlisle, Shrewsbury, Lincoln, Coventry, and a castle at Acton Burnell before Westminster became its permanent home.
Common questions
When was the Parliament of England first established?
The Parliament of England evolved from the great council of bishops and peers that advised English monarchs. The word parliament was first used in 1236 to describe meetings of this council, though great councils were called Parliaments during the reign of Henry III before that date. The institution traced its roots to 10th-century assemblies of the witan.
What was the Model Parliament of 1295?
The Model Parliament of November 1295 was summoned by Edward I to raise money for his war against Philip IV of France over Aquitaine. Sheriffs were instructed to send two elected knights from each shire and two elected burgesses from each borough. For the first time, the writ of summons gave shire knights and burgesses full power to provide both counsel and consent, not merely to approve what the magnates had already decided.
What were the Provisions of Oxford and how did they change Parliament?
The Provisions of Oxford were a constitutional framework forced on Henry III by reform-minded barons at the Oxford Parliament of 1258. They required the king to govern with an elected baronial council, set Parliament to meet three times a year on a fixed schedule, and created a standing committee of twelve representatives who could act on legislation between sessions. Parliament was for the first time established formally, not merely by custom, as the voice of the community of the realm.
What role did Simon de Montfort play in the history of the Parliament of England?
Simon de Montfort led the baronial reform movement against Henry III and, after defeating the king at the Battle of Lewes in 1264, became the real ruler of England for roughly twelve months. His January 1265 parliament was the first to summon both knights of the shire and burgesses together. Montfort was killed at the Battle of Evesham in 1265, and Parliament subsequently authorised the Dictum of Kenilworth in August 1266, nullifying his reforms.
Why was Charles I put on trial by Parliament?
After Pride's Purge in December 1648 removed members who did not support the New Model Army, the remaining Rump Parliament enacted legislation to try Charles I for treason against the English people. The trial's outcome was regarded as a foregone conclusion, and Charles was executed in January 1649, leading to an 11-year republic. Charles I was the last English monarch ever to enter the House of Commons.
How did the Parliament of England end and what replaced it?
The Parliament of England was dissolved in 1707 following the Treaty of Union, which merged the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain. Acts passed in both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland created the new Parliament of Great Britain, based at Westminster. That body later became the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1801 through the Acts of Union 1800.
All sources
3 references cited across the entry
- 2NewsWho is Black Rod and what do they do in Parliament?2019-09-10