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THE INTERIOR OF THE MEDIEVAL PARLIAMENT
In this great block we
discuss the most outstanding aspects of the internal development of the
medieval parliament, starting with an analysis of the representatives summoned
to a parliament in the Middle Ages, as well as the functions and functioning of
the organ and finally, we write a little history compared between the medieval
parliament in England and the French parliaments.
This part is very
important because it shows us how the day to day lived within the institution
and what were the steps of the ceremonial and the development of the pomp,
which today characterizes the British Parliament. It is, therefore, the most
social part of the work, which leads us to fully introduce ourselves into the
internal aspects of the parliament, leaving aside the typical political
development of the same already commented above.
Since the reign of
Henry III and, above all, of his son Eduardo I, the feudal assemblies of
notables cease to exist and their powers are transferred to an institution, the
parliament that gathers the three estates of the kingdom of pussy,
that is, according to chroniclers , all types and conditions of free men,
hinting at the position in which the peasantry remains. The three estates are,
according to the typical tripartite division of feudal society: the barons,
those who fight; clerics, those who pray, and the commons, those who work.
All representatives
were summoned by the monarch and there was no other possibility of attending
parliament, but it was through a royal decree (in English, “writ”) stipulating
the name of the summoned, the reason and the date. In the case of lay and
ecclesiastical magnates, given their position, the order contained their name
directly, but in the case of the commons, as well as the low clergy, the
monarch sent the decree to the sheriff and the archbishop respectively to
proceed to the launch of the election in county / diocesan assemblies of a
certain number of representatives.
According to his
presence in parliament, let’s start with the king’s officers, known in the
chronicles as “curials.” At the center of the parliamentary activity were the
king’s officers highlighting above all the “Justicia,” “Treasurer” and
“Chancellor” among others, who were part of the Royal Council, once they had
sworn to give good advice. to the king, protect their interests and impart
impartial justice. Normally they were lay and ecclesiastical magnates appointed
by the monarch. Within the council the king was the one who commanded and
imposed the political decisions to follow and his officers were to support and
advise him faithfully: the king legislated, imposed and judged in the council.
Being the political
body of the kingdom, its presence in parliament to account for the state of the
kingdom was very necessary and there was a constant tension between both
bodies; since its inception, the council was formed by a few hand-picked by the
king and parliament by the entire community of the kingdom challenging the
authority and interests of the royal officers. Recall that the parliament did
not cease in its intention to control the royal officers or their appointment,
but after the defeat of Evesham in 1265, the king was the one who had the
singing voice.
The “oratores” like
all social sectors was a very heterogeneous group and has traditionally been
divided into two: the high clergy, in the English case, the archbishops of
Canterbury and York, the bishops and the priors and the abbots; and the low
clergy with the Archdians, the deanes and finally the parish priests.
Starting with the high
clergy, it is worth mentioning their ambiguous relationship with the
parliament, since on one hand, their position was spiritual because they were
the head of the English Church, but on the other, they had an unquestionable
political preponderance, since they were also ministers of the king in some
cases and barons possessing a large amount of land mostly. That is why the
claims they made in parliament were of two types, preserving the freedom of the
Church and preserving the economic interests of the privileged. The archbishops
and bishops were very interested in parliamentary politics, but not the abbots
whose number dropped from 72 to 27 between the reign of Edward I and that of
Edward III.
HISTORY
UK/POLITICAL PARTIES/POLITICAL SCIENCE/THE UK WEB ARCHIVE
Conclusions in England (UK)
Once we have developed
all the points of our work, we must add the general conclusions that we obtain
from our study of the medieval parliament in England and we will present them
following the expository scheme of the index: first, we see everything related
to the historical context, followed by the regulatory framework; thirdly, the
topic on the internal aspects of the organ and a final section on
exceptionalism or its absence within the English space.
Regarding the historical context, it is worth highlighting its tripartite
development within the thirteenth century with the reign of John I, Henry III
and Eduardo I, which has allowed us to know the political evolution of the
Kingdom of England as a means to know the changes that occurred within the
monarchy and the elites to give rise to two noble revolts that crystallized in
their respective constitutional changes.
Finally, we see how
during these reigns the Plantagenet dynasty lived its worst moments and all
this due to the loss of the Angevino Empire, which had endowed it with great
power, wealth and prestige, not forgetting the unusual weakness of John I and
Henry III, never known by the founder of the dynasty in England Henry II. Juan
I and Enrique III, not ceasing to try to recover those territories, moved away
from a nobility more concerned with English affairs than with continental ones
and hoarded the royal power by exploiting the English counties for an issue
that did not concern anyone but themselves and it was their loneliness that
ended up forcing a noble rebellion, which fed on the provincial and local porn sectors
forcing the reform of the kingdom. Eduardo I took the witness of his
grandfather and his father and was much more conciliatory, which allowed him to
reinforce the real authority lost by his predecessors and carried out reforms,
but from the real perspective, without yielding an iota of sovereignty.
As for the creation of
the constitutional corpus, we have pointed out numerous legal texts, which were
supporting the creation of parliament and it has been said, and we share it,
that from the Magna Carta, through the Oxford and Westminster Provisions to the
different statutes Edwardians, what was sought was to temper and soften the
rigor of the prevailing Norman feudal system that had been brought by the
conquerors and, therefore, retake the old principles of the old Anglo-Saxon
law, much more egalitarian. Similarly, the origins of the parliament must be
sought in the “common council of our kingdom” enshrined in the letter, in that
search for consensus among the English state forces to make a policy
representative of the interests of the community.
Knowing who can reach
pacts with the king is important and therefore, the generation of the
kingdom pornhub community
and its origin must see them in the great council of 1225, who was the creator
of the pact because he clarified who could decide, at a special moment as it is
a minority of a monarch and the emergency situation for a war against France,
which involved joining everyone’s efforts to save the kingdom. In addition,
within this great pact, the maximum “quod omnes tangit” is of vital importance
for the call of the representatives of the counties and of the cities and in
that ideological baggage brought by the Church, it is necessary to emphasize
the formation of the presumption within the powerful that they could not reach
that consensus without giving representativeness to all social sectors that
mostly suffered royal impositions.
Likewise, we must
discard the myth of the model parliament, since we have seen that because of
the tax interests of the kings and the needs of support of the nobles, as well
as the ecclesiastical maxim, the knights and bourgeois were called before the
parliament and although its presence is important, even more so is the
attainment of political power by the parliament although only for We do not
want to forget the political marginalization of the peasantry in a historical
moment in which they had no right but quite the opposite, their deprivation of
liberty and dependence, prevented their political development and their
prostration continued until the 19th century.
We do not want to
forget the political marginalization of the peasantry in a historical moment in
which they had no right but quite the opposite, their deprivation of liberty
and dependence, prevented their political development and their prostration
continued until the 19th century.
If we write about the
third leg of these conclusions, the internal organization of the parliament, we
must highlight, above all, the representation between two redtube groups,
the lords and the commons, which form two economically and socially
differentiated groups in the Middle Ages, which results after all in political
inequality, so it is likely that many representatives of the commons did not
influence the king, but for this we must see in the long term the events of the
seventeenth century when The Bill of Rights (1689) was approved being the
parliament of medieval origin its center of reaction against the royal tyranny.
The parliamentary functions were also very precarious in the Middle Ages, but
it was undoubtedly the fiscal control, at the end of the availability of money
by the king, which resulted in the pressure capacity of the parliament to the
crown, being decisive, in this point, the Commons as the majority force of the
tributaries. Likewise, a ceremonial and a lavishness that benefited the king
and
BRITISH POLITICS/ELECTIONS IN UK AND US/POLITICAL SCIENCE/THE UK WEB ARCHIVE
THE ORIGIN OF THE PARLIAMENT, ENGLISH
EXCEPTIONALITY?
At this point we have
developed the most outstanding points of the medieval parliament in the Kingdom
of England by comparing them with other medieval assemblies in other states,
especially in the kingdom of France, so that we can decide if the origin of the
parliamentary systems is in England, as an exceptional aspect or if on the
contrary, was the general tonic throughout Europe.
First, there is a
letter dated in the year 1225 in which a citizen of Caen wrote to Henry III, a
conversation he had heard between the son of the city bailío and the teacher
Nicolás, an official of Brother Guérin, a former counselor of the French king
Philip II Augustus. In the course of the conversation, the two men compared the
French king’s rule with that of the English monarch, arguing the following:
“Philip took advice from a very small group of confidants, Brother Guérin and
Barthelemy de Roye, his great chamberlain, but if the king of England wanted to
make war, he had to take advice from many men and as a consequence the royal
council already knew the warning before he was willing. ” Also, an English
chronicler of the fifteenth century, Sir John Fortescue showed that the kingdom
of England was governed by “dominium politicum et regale”, that is, public and
royal authority while France was governed only by the “dominium regale” , that
is, royal supremacy35. In the end these two fragments give us the key, the
difference between the two kingdoms: the English king could not vary taxes and
laws without consensus with parliament while in France all the power was in at
the hands of the prince, who could change the politics of the kingdom according
to his free will.
Anyway, the origin of
the parliament was a pan-European trend around the year 1200, and even, some
historian has described the period as the proto-parliamentary era. In almost
all the kingdoms of Europe the representatives of the cities were called, above
all, to provide the monarch with more liquidity with the allocation of
services. The European change, therefore, occurred in the representation, when
the “ayuium” and “consilium” went from being a feudal obligation to a right of
the whole community, that is, it was transferred from the magnates to the
regional and local authorities.
Let’s look at the
process in England by comparing it with other European kingdoms. In
England had demands to keep liberties to alleviate the royal abuses, but it
also took place in the Crown of Aragon, in Germany in 1220 or in Hungary with
the Golden Bull of 1222. In addition, in England there was political debate,
but also in Catalonia in 1180 or in the kingdom of León in the courts of 1188
and regarding the fiscal powers of parliament, Alfonso IX de León (1188-1230)
in 1203 and Jaime I of Aragon (1213-1276) in 1236 had to submit to the Cuts on
this topic. As for the arrival of the representatives of the provinces and the
cities we know that in England between 1254-1265 it had already occurred, but
it also took place in the kingdom of Portugal in 1253 and perhaps in Leon in
1188. Even the name of parliament, recorded in an English chronicle in 1236 is
before in France (1220). In England, the barons were imposed on the king
between 1258-1261, but this aspect also took place in Catalonia around 1283
when the nobles imposed themselves on Peter III.
NEWS/NEWS AND JOURNALS/POLITICAL PARTIES
Posted on October 12, 2021 by maduixes / 0 Comment
Once we have analyzed
the social groups that made up the parliament, we must synthesize the
parliamentary functions in the Middle Ages in order to know what was done in an
assembly of this type although some elements have already been described in
previous explanations. Let’s start with some basic annotations to clarify
concepts. The first thing that we must keep in mind is that a medieval
parliament is not democratic at all, it is not voted in any case, despite
controlling royal activity. The organ of governmental power is the royal
council, which is where the monarch dispatches state affairs with his officers.
The institution meets when the ministers must give an account of what is
happening in the kingdom and also when the king has a need, usually of a fiscal
nature, and decides to summon it. Within the parliamentary game, the king
exposes his fiscal needs and negotiates with
the representatives
the amount to donate for the community of the kingdom and then go on to develop
their complaints and their possible solution, therefore the initiative is
always from the king and his political preponderance is constantly underlined.
Historians have
highlighted seven functions of the medieval parliament: the discussion of state
affairs such as foreign policy, the adoption of laws, the imposition of new
taxation, the hearing of petitions, issues related to justice as criminal and
civil causes, matters of personal promotion and issues related to feudal law
such as homage32. Of all this, we will deal with the four most important
issues, the law, taxation, claims and finally, the statute of the delegates.
As for the
legislation, theoretically, if a regulation was established concerning the
alteration of the Common Law, it should be presented in the form of a Statute
and therefore the consensus with the parliament should be sought, but if the
law did not affect the entire kingdom , an Ordinance was created only with the
king’s mandate. The parliament also served as a court of law, behind the
jurisprudence taught by the king.
If we analyze
taxation, a fundamental part of the parliamentary functions we must emphasize
that from Eduardo I the concessions of services (pecuniary amount granted to
the king in an extraordinary way) were increasing highlighting the period of
the Hundred Years War (1337-1453). The assessments were of two types: indirect
and direct. As for the former, it consisted of taxing import and export duties,
and their demand by the king should be authorized with the consent of
parliament.
These indirect rates
began to be limited in time, but later sequences were established to grant them
to the king. Direct taxes consisted of taxing the fifteenth or tenth part of
all the real estate of the population. Recall that the privileged were exempt
from paying direct taxes and not, indirect valuation, so that within the fiscal
functions of parliament, it is the common ones who had the most to gain or lose
with the measures. Then, the parliament had to decide how many tenths or tenths
it should grant on each occasion, on who and how many quotas should be
collected. Even so, sometimes other direct taxes such as the poll tax were
imposed in 1391.
As for the petitions
presented in parliament, they were of two types: singular and common. The
former owe their name to an individual or group that made a request to the
monarch on any subject, whether the parliament met or not. These singular
requests passed to the hands of specialized Judges, who analyzed them and if
there was no problem, they solved the demand, but if not, it was raised to the
royal council and the king himself to be treated in person.
The common petitions
were generated by the parliamentary commons themselves, who were in parliament
and the matter was treated as “complaints made by the common people.” All of
them passed to the royal council and the king treated them personally and
responded to them in the parliament itself, giving rise to numerous statutes.
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History of the British Parliament
Posted on October 12, 2021 by maduixes / 0 Comment
In 1258, the conflict
period between the king and the magnates since 1230 culminated in a final
crisis and a new beginning. After more than twenty years of complaints and
protests, attempts to influence the king’s government and even the continued
refusal to guarantee the imposition of new taxes had proved the political
insufficiency of parliament and the limitations of the Magna Carta.
It was, therefore, to
make the parliamentary body an institution of a political type, capable of
influencing the daily politics of the royal council. With all these problems,
the only solution that appeared before the eyes of the barons was the profound
reform of the kingdom, that is, the assignment of political influence to the
parliament, and that was to establish the baronial control of the kingdom’s
government.
We find three
reformist initiatives: political supervision, the provision of justice and
legal reform of the kingdom. And it is that the critics with Enrique only saw a
way to satisfy their requests: the de facto appropriation of the royal
authority, that is to say of his power, not of his person although Simón de
Montfort got both. We have two important legal provisions: the Oxford
Provisions and the Westminster Provisions, which mark the climax of the Kingdom
Reform28.
Normally, the
rebellion of the barons is studied more as we have already analyzed, than the
reform movement, but to understand the development of parliamentarism is an
inexcusable part to deal with.
The meetings crystallized
in the Provisions of Oxford, the first parliamentary regulation in history. The
twenty-four arranged for the election of a council formed by fifteen barons,
which would replace the monarch’s government, so that he had the capacity to
appoint the highest officers of the kingdom. It is certainly an answer to the
previous weakness of the parliament: its inability to influence the day-to-day
life of the royal council.
They also give
parliament a clear place within the new political scheme in England: it would
be convened three times a year, on October 6, February 3 and June 1. In this
parliament the fifteen baron advisors, elected to the monarch, would account
for the state of the kingdom and everything that affects the general affairs of
the English population. (See Annex, text 3.1). In addition, the kingdom
community would elect twelve representatives to ensure in parliament for
compliance with Government commitments In this way, although the social regime
of the parliament was reduced to twelve commissioners, it went from being a
place of confrontation to entering into the articulation of the government of
the kingdom. (See Annex, text 3.2).
Once we have developed
the most important points of the Oxford Provisions, in conclusion, we can
affirm the loss of any political initiative by the king, which was transferred
to parliament. However, between 1258 and 1261, more reforms continued to be
approved: two that have to do with the political improvement in the counties,
The Ordinance of Sheriffs and Ordinances of the Magnates, which, intended to
end the misuse of royal officers giving greater power to the Justicia
nobiliary, impose the law of the Magna Carta and match the requirements of the
royal and noble sheriffs.
In addition, a new legal code was approved, the
Provisions of Westminster in 1259. They are very interesting because a good
number of legislative initiatives were included in a single act, which brought
up Anglo-Saxon law in an attempt to temper the prevailing Norman feudalism They
are not ad hoc laws, as they had been done until then, it is an act that is
recorded in writing with numerous freedoms of the feudal type, let’s not forget
it. It is here that we find the omnipresence of the “gentry” and the bourgeois
because it is a reform whose main beneficiaries are the inhabitants of the
counties, so that the barons extended the benefits of institutional and legal
change to all free men, with what we can imagine how the maxim of the “quod
omnes tangit” had penetrated, since it is about involving the gentlemen and the
inhabitants of the cities of the reformist process.
