The growth of Parliament

Magna Carta

Magna Carta (Latin for «the Great Charter», literally «the Great Paper»), also called Magna Carta Libertatum («Great Char­ter of Freedoms»), was designed to rebalance the power between the King and the barons. It has come to be the symbol of the rule of law in England, protecting the rights of the individual. Its basic principles have been used in the constitutions of the USA, Japan, Germany and many Commonwealth and other countries.

The Magna Carta was a detailed expansion of the 49 main heads contained in 'the Articles of the Barons'. A large part of the Magna Carta was copied, nearly word for word, from the Char­ter of Liberties of Henry I, issued when Henry I ascended to the throne in 1100, which bound the king to certain laws regarding the treatment of church officials and nobles, effectively granting certain civil liberties to the church and the English nobility.

The 63 clauses, written in Latin on vellum (calf-skin), con­taining about 3,500 abbreviated Latin words, include the funda­mental principles of a fair trial before one's equals, a recognition that the King is not above the law, the freedom of the Church to govern its own affairs, and the righting of many abuses — for example, widows were no longer to be remarried against their will, weights and measures were standardised and 'to no-one will we sell, to no-one will we deny or delay right or justice'. John agreed to release all hostages, expell his foreign favourites, and give back land illegally taken. Clause 24 states that crown officials (such as sheriffs) may not try a crime in place of a judge. By clauses 39 and 40 King John promised that no freeman should be imprisoned without a fair trial according to law, and that no one should be denied justice.

The Magna Carta also established:

A person could not be tried more than once for the same offence

• Every free man had the right to own property and it could not be taken without due process of law.

• The right not to be fined so heavily as to have livelihood destroyed.

Punishment had to fit the crime.

• Taxation when 'the common counsel of the realm' had been obtained (an early form of taxation with representation). In addition, only reasonable taxes ('aids') were to be taken by the knights from their free tenants.

The people's rights to forest and riverbanks (to fuel and food and building supplies).

• The right of London and other cities, boroughs, towns, and ports to have all their liberties and free customs.

• The right of a people to travel freely in and out of their country, except during war.

The Magna Carta protected certain rights of the king's sub­jects — whether free or fettered — most notably the right ofHa­beas Corpus, meaning that they had rights against unlawful impris­onment. The right of Habeas София as such, was first invoked in court in the year 1305.

In the 17^th century the Magna Carta was used by Parliament to protect itself from kings James I and Charles I (Lesson 7). Sir Edward Coke expressed a view that the Charter guaranteed sub­stantive rights to all Englishmen and strictly limited the power of the Crown.

The Magna Carta was several times reissued, and in 1297 became law. Many clauses were renewed throughout the Middle Ages, and further during the Tudor (Lessons 5, 6) and Stuart peri­ods (Lessons 7, 8), and the 18^th century. By the early 19^th century most clauses in their original form had been repealed from English law.

Three clauses of the 1297 version of Magna Carta still remain in force in current English law. Clause 1 guarantees the freedom of the English Church. Although this originally meant freedom from the King, later in history it was used for different purposes. Clause 9 guarantees the "ancient liberties" of the city of London. Clause 29 guarantees a right to due process.

The Magna Carta has been called the foundation of British constitution.

Edward I (1272-1307)

Edward was in many ways the ideal medieval king. He was a good fighter, and was a man who enjoyed both war and state­craft. His crusading reputation gave him prestige, and his chivalric qualities were admired. Although he had a gift for leadership, he lacked sympathy for others and had an obstinacy that led to in­flexibility.

Law and government

In the 13th century the development of law became a domi­nant concern, as is shown by the great treatise On the Laws and Customs of England, attributed to the royal judge Bracton but probably put together in the 1220s and '30s under one of his predecessors on the King's Bench. Soon after Edward's return to England in 1274, a major inquiry into government in the localities took place that yielded the so-called Hundred Rolls, a heteroge­neous group of records, and brought home the need for changes in the law. In 1275 the First Statute of Westminster was issued. A succession of other statutes followed in later years, providing a kind of supplement to the common law. Some measures protected the king's rights; others remedied the grievances of his subjects. In the quo warranto proceedings set up under the Statute of Glouces­ter of 1278 the magnates were asked by what warrant they claimed rights of jurisdiction and other franchises. This created much ar­gument, which was resolved in the Statute of Quo Warranto of 1290. By the Statute of Mortmain of 1279 it was provided that no more land was to be given to the church without royal license. The Statute of Quia Emptores of 1290 had the effect of preventing further subinfeudation of land. In the first and second statutes of Westminster, of 1275 and 1285, many deficiencies in the law were corrected, such as those concerning the relationship between lords and tenants and the way in which the system of distraint was op­erated. Merchants benefited from the Statute of Acton Burnell of 1283 and the Statute of Merchants of 1285, which facilitated debt collection. Problems of law and order were tackled in the Statute of Winchester of 1285.

During the reign of Edward I there were three main royal courts which had grown out of Curia Regis. They dealt with cases involving the royal revenue and the collection of taxes (Court of the Exchequer), criminal and civil cases in which the king was concerned (Court of King's Bench), and cases which concerned disputes between private individuals (Court of Common Pleas). In addition to these three main courts, yet more courts were created to deal with many other aspects of local life, and courts of one kind or another gradually became a focal point in the everyday life of most citizens.

Finance

Edward began his reign with heavy debts incurred on crusade, and his various wars also were costly. In 1275 Edward gained a secure financial basis when he negotiated a grant of export duties on wool, woolfells, and hides that brought in an average of 10,000 a year. He borrowed extensively from Italian bankers on the secu­rity of these customs revenues. The system of levying taxes on an assessment of the value of movable goods was also of great value. Successive profitable taxes were granted, mostly in Parliament. It was partly in return for one such tax, in 1290, that Edward ex­pelled the Jews from England. Their moneylending activities had made them unpopular, and royal exploitation had so impoverished the Jews that there was no longer an advantage for Edward in keeping them in England.

The growth of Parliament

Edward was not the first to call a parliament. In 1265 the first true English parliament to include elected representatives was summoned by Simon de Montfort. Edward I fostered the concept of the community of the realm and the practice of calling repre­sentative knights of the shire and burgesses from the towns to Par­liament. In 1275 he commanded each shire and each town to send two representatives to his parliament. Representatives were needed to give consent to taxation, as well as to enhance communication between the king and his subjects. The process of petitioning the king and his council in Parliament was greatly encouraged. Histo­rians have aigued much about the nature of Edward's Parliament. Some of them see Edward as responding to the dictates of Ro­man law, while others interpret the development of Parliament in terms of the practical solution of financial and political problems. Historians used to refer to the 1295 assembly as the Model Parlia­ment because it contained all the elements later associated with the word parliament, but in fact these can all be found earlier. The writs to the sheriffs asking them to call knights and burgesses did, however, reach a more or less final form in 1295. Representatives of the lower clergy were also summoned. This Parliament was fully representative of local communities and of the whole community of the realm, but many Parliaments were attended solely by the magnates with no representatives present.

Edward's wars

In the first half of his reign Edward was thoroughly successful inWales. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, prince of Gwynedd, had tak­en advantage of the Barons' War to try to expand his authority throughout Wales. He refused to do homage to Edward, and in 1277 the English king conducted a short and methodical campaign against him. Using a partly feudal, partly paid army, the core of which was provided by the royal household knights, and a fleet from the Cinque Ports, Edward won a quick victory and exacted from Llywelyn the Treaty of Conway. Llywelyn agreed to perform fealty and homage, to pay a large indemnity (from which he was soon excused), and to surrender certain districts of North Wales. There was considerable Welsh resentment after 1277 at the man­ner in which Edward imposed his jurisdiction in Wales.

David, Llywelyn's younger brother, was responsible for a re­newal of war in 1282. He was soon joined by Llywelyn, who was killed in battle late in the year. David was captured and executed as a traitor in 1283. This second Welsh war proved much longer, more costly, and more difficult for the English than the first. In the succeeding peace North Wales was organized into counties, and law was revised along English lines. Merchant settlements, colonized with English craftsmen and merchants, were founded. Archbishop Pecham reorganized the Welsh church and brought it more fully under the sway of Canterbury. A brief revolt in 1287 was soon quelled, but Edward faced a major rebellion in 1294—95, after which he founded the last of his Welsh castles, Beaumaris in Anglesey.

Edward devoted much attention toGascony, the land he held in southwestern France. He went there prior to returning to Eng­land at the start of the reign and spent the period 1286-89 there. In 1294 he had to undertake a costly defence of his French lands, when war began with Philip IV, king of France. Open hostilities lasted until 1297. In this case the French were the aggressors. Fol­lowing private naval warfare between Gascon and Norman sailors, Philip summoned Edward (who, as Duke of Aquitaine, was his vassal) to his court and, having deceived English negotiators, de­creed Gascony confiscate. Edward built up a grand alliance against the French, but the war proved costly and inconclusive.

Edward intervened inScotland in 1291, when he claimed ju­risdiction over a complex succession dispute. King Alexander III had been killed when his horse fell one stormy night in 1286. His heiress was his three-year-old granddaughter, Margaret, the Maid of Norway. Arrangements were made for her to marry Edward's son Edward, but these plans were thwarted by Margaret's death in 1290. There were 13 claimants to the Scottish throne, the two main candidates being John de Balliol and Robert de Bruce. A court of 104 auditors, of whom 40 were chosen by Balliol and 40 by Bruce, was set up. Balliol was designated king and performed fealty and homage to Edward.

Edward did all he could to emphasize his own claims to feudal suzerainty over Scotland, and his efforts to put these into effect provoked Scottish resistance. In 1295 the Scots, having imposed a baronial council on Balliol, made a treaty with the French. War was inevitable, and in a swift and successful campaign Edward defeated Balliol in 1296, forcing him to abdicate. The victory, however, had been too easy. Revolt against the inept officials Ed­ward had appointed to rule in Scotland came in 1297, headed by William Wallace and Andrew Moray. Victory for Edward at the battle of Falkirk in 1298, however, did not win the war. A lengthy series of costly campaigns appeared to have brought success by 1304, and in the next year Edward set up a scheme for governing Scotland, by now termed by the English a land, not a kingdom. But in 1306 Robert de Bruce, grandson of the earlier claimant to the throne, a man who had fought on both sides in the war, seized the Scottish throne and reopened the conflict, which continued into the reign of Edward II, who succeeded his father in 1307.

It has been claimed that during his wars Edward I transformed the traditional feudal host into an efficient, paid army. In fact, feudal summonses continued throughout his reign, though only providing a proportion of the army. The paid forces of the royal household were a very important element, but it is clear that the magnates also provided substantial unpaid forces for campaigns of which they approved. The king's military successes were primarily due to the skill of his government in mobilizing resources, in terms of men, money, and supplies, on an unprecedented scale.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 1294